Creating Counter-strike Maps

There has been a lot of reporting lately about the student at Clements High School in Fort Bend. Apparently the boy made the mistake of learning how to make game maps in his spare time, and modeling his high school so he could play in it in Counter-Strike. His reward was being grilled by the police and transferred to an “alternative education center”.
Since the first teapot was modeled in 1975 at the University of Utah, people have been trying to recreate their environment through computer rendering. God forbid someone actually take some initiative and try to recreate an environment they know well inside one of the mostly widely available games for customization. What I wonder is, was his map any good? How did he texture it? Because I know some game teams that are looking for good environmental modelers and level designers.
Seriously, is this the level of paranoia to which we’ve sunk? I’ve modeled my house inside of Unreal Editor, I’ve modeled my office inside of a game I was building… how cool is it to be able to recreate and explore an environment you know well? Could there be a better test of a graphics engine?
The police claim that “…there are some other things…” found in his room which added to their suspicions and led to their decision to move him to another school. They were probably ninja throwing stars, or maybe the Anarchist Cookbook, things that any self-respecting geek who is interested in the world probably has around.
The level of paranoia about violence in games has gotten out of control. Can’t we all spend more of our concern worrying about our troops in Iraq, or our relations with Iran and North Korea?
But what do I know, maybe the kid had some grenades and plastic explosives under his bed.