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Massachusetts Man Arrested for Knowingly Concealing the Source of Material Support or Resources to a Foreign Terrorist Organization, otherwise known as the FBI grooms yet another kid; an agent have been in contact with a guy since he was 16 until 18, LARPing as an ISIS recruiter and soliciting gift cards, Indian scammer style.
What is the value of these ploys to society? This seems morally abhorrent to me and the only justification I can find is that "he would've done it if the agent was a real ISIS member," but (a) he tried to report the contact and (b) this logic doesn't work for entrapment.
What is the value of these ploys to the FBI? Going off tropes, more crimes = more funding more power and more reputation. If that's the case I want more concrete and detailed pathways.
Is there a way I can access the criminal complaint? I am skeptical of the "Brain Development Issues" and think the Intercept is trying to sensationalize the story which works to the latter's detriment; what the FBI did is unacceptable even if the guy was a genius.
I think presumably the implication is that the FBI believes that ISIS truly does recruit online and that by re-routing some of the would-be terrorists to them, they are taking away "real" terrorists. This assumes that a) there is a finite number of people who would commit a terror attack for ISIS online (thus being a sort of zero-sum thing), and b) if the FBI doesn't help them, they will go to someone real who can. I think assumption A is probably fine, I don't really think that the FBI is somehow generating additional potential recruits by their actions, so a fixed pool generally seems to make sense. Assumption B is a bit trickier, but from a law enforcement perspective, is it truly worth the risk of ignoring potential terrorists because you're hoping that they aren't serious and that they will grow out of it or something? Furthermore, I don't have much sympathy to be honest for the so-called "false positives" in this kind of scenario. Even if you are (let's say) hoodwinked and egged on by the FBI to do things you don't want to do in actuality... nothing's really stopping you from just stopping these conversations? Unless their process violates assumption B (the honey traps somehow radicalizing MORE than a comparable "real ISIS" control group) I can't see this being a concern keeping many people up at night. It's not like going to a terrorist training camp is the kind of "whoopsie" that anyone could be suckered into doing.
It also is probably a good idea to let actual wannabes know that the "recruiter" they are talking to might be an FBI agent. Clandestine networks can't work if participants can't be confident that they are actually clandestine.
Flood the zone with fakes, and then to the extent actual terrorist recruiters exist, they'll always be written off as fakes by potential recruits.
Not a bad idea. Imagine a future of fedposting bots, deployed very widely. You can test the loyalty of the citizen to the state in real time. Occasionally expose him to a proposal of terrorist activities. If he responds positively or doesn't report it to the government, he is targeted for punishment or remedial patriotic education, depending on the seriousness of the offense. You could pretty much snuff out all terrorist activity in the crib.
1984 was not intended to be an instruction manual! And this would be a perfect way to start terrorist activity in anyone who did not want to live in a totalitarian state. What would be considered "lack of loyalty to the state"? You really don't think that would suffer definition creep?
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Well technically it would work I guess. But then you could also torture anyone suspected of disloyalty to the regime to death while forcing them to name accomplices. That also works quite well, but I don't think I'd want to live in a country where that was routine policy.
Exactly where to draw the line is a little tricky, but I think if we're routinely persuading malcontent teenagers to do just enough to get them convicted without them ever having spoken to an actual dissident group of some sort, and this happens say 10x more often than actual terrorist acts, we've gone too far in the direction of suppressing dissent.
Yeah, if we're talking "isolated 16 year old meets sympathetic listener online who subtly encourages him in the direction of jihad over two years worth of interaction", then the Feds could as easily have encouraged him to talk about wanting to shoot up his school, or rob a bank, or assassinate a state governor.
If they were really serious about preventing radicalisation or whatever, they'd have contacted his parents or mental health services when he was 16. Instead, they waited until he was 18 and legally adult before "surprise, you're arrested, you criminal terrorist master mind you!" That sounds a lot more like "keeping our numbers up" than "nipping terrorism in the bud".
Please, the Feds do not do assassination plots against state elected officials. It would be about KIDNAPPING a state governor, though what you do with her once you have her I don't know.
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I don’t think there is any reason to conflate lack of loyalty to the state with willingness to commit crimes, including aiding violent organizations in faroff lands. As far as we know, this guy was completely loyal to the state. Just as plenty of Americans who illegally aided the IRA during the troubles were loyal to the US.
Was the IRA an enemy of the US like ISIS is?
It was engaging in what it considered to be a war against the UK (the UK considered it to be sporadic violent crime, rather then war). If you accept the IRA's claim that it was waging war, then it was an enemy of the United States per article 5 of the NATO treaty.
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This is oxymoronic. If you violate the policies and laws of the government, you are by definition disloyal.
To the government perhaps, but the government and the country weren't always considered one and the same. Civil war is usually patriots vs patriots.
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