If I recall correctly, there are no recordings of the initial conversations with this guy and the mole. So I don't know whether this guy said, "Hey I really want to blow some 'mercans up" and the FBI said, "Hey, we've got something that can help..." OR if the guy said, "Yeah, I frickin' hate 'mercans" and the FBI said, "if you want to blow some of them up, we can help...."

Because there aren't any tapes, I can't tell you whether it was entrapment. So, this is just a really tough case that would have been made easier if the jackass FBI had taped EVERYTHING.

if the individual was approached and goaded by the government, i.e. the gov told him they could provide him with a bomb, then that is entrapment.

If the individual actively sought out someone to provide him with a bomb, then THAT would be a crime.

---------- Post added at 11:45 AM ---------- Previous post was at 11:44 AM ----------

good luck with that ever happening. big brother/sister don't like embarrassing themselves.

Yes, they can legally trick someone into thinking they are buying a real bomb. The fake bomb is part of a sting. Taking action is when you buy the bomb to kill people, then detonate the bomb in the hope of killing people. Do you find it unfair that a government can provide fake bombs via a sting operation?

If a city loses electrical power, and looting occurs because there are no alarms, are those people turned into criminals by the electric company?

My view is that they become criminals on their own by the act of looting.

---------- Post added at 12:53 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:48 PM ----------

I agree. I believe the second scenario you describe to be true in this case.
Do you still think it is a crime if the someone sought out ended up being a government agent?

*Facepalm*

I find it completely unconstitutional that the government can break the very laws they write. If the sale/possession of cocaine is illegal, how is it legal for cops to possess and try to sell cocaine to people?



If i'm understanding your question correctly, the person actively sought out someone to provide him a bomb, then yes, that would be a criminal act, whether it was a government agent or not.

who knows what the truth is at this point, though i'm sure some people will gladly accept the FBIs propaganda at face value over that of someone who wanted to kill people. All that i'm saying is that it's far more likely that most people were goaded and entrapped in to committing these crimes by a criminal agent.

there is a surreal side to this that filtherton summed up quite nicely above.

thanks for the information about how entrapment is actually defined.

there's obviously a lot of room for negociation in court over whether action a was or was not entrapment. it's not clear from the statute excerpts that kir stang posted whether having documentation would be adequate to determine for any of us whether this was or wasn't entrapment--what would matter is the arguments in court and the disposition of the judge that day...

It is based on the theory of authorized criminality.

Yes, you understood my question correctly and you provided answer that I would have expected.

Yes, I will admit that when I read or hear a story between the FBI and someone who wanted to kill people, I often believe the FBI unless there is evidence to the contrary.

i'm sorry. authorized criminality? please explain.


:sad:

The question of whether or not this was entrapment is entirely separate from the question of whether this arrest actually accomplished anything. Doesn't that question bother anyone else?

Here is a link to the article which speaks to it better than I can: BREAKING THE LAW TO ENFORCE IT: UNDERCOVER POLICE PARTICIPATION IN CRIME | Stanford Law Review | Find Articles at BNET

even the author has misgivings about this.

seriously, authorized criminality. think about that. the enforcers of law are allowed to break the law. are you really ok with that?

i don't see this as having accomplished anything at all. it seems to me more security theater.

I heard that the FBI has joined the war on underage drinking. Their strategy is going to be to offer every 17 year old in the nation a sip of beer and arrest the ones who accept.

I don't see as how it did accomplish anything, either. We have this young man talking some shit for a few years who, not being a leader-type, never tried anything on his own and, being that there was no one to provide him guidance in Corvallis apparently, received guidance from the FBI.

I don't see how this can even be reasonably compared to other FBI sting operations that involve drugs or prostitution. Those operations usually involve 'known qualities.' They know that crimes are going on when they set them up. That doesn't seem to be the case here and I don't think there would be much of an argument here if the suspect involved was someone with a known history of terrorist engagements or organized involvement with a terrorist group.

The reports that made the news were that this guy expected this bomb to kill a bunch of people and didn't care. So regardless whether this was entrapment or not, one guy who had no reservations about killing a bunch of people and who was willing to make the call to trigger the bomb is now off the streets, hopefully for a long time.

Maybe the FBI could have waited until he managed to build a real bomb, only to lose track of him at the last moment. Then what? Kaboom? Who knows?

Why this guy then? Is it your assumption that he was one of the most dangerous men in America or something? Or is the arbitrary enforcement of justice based on assumptions just fine and dandy with you?

---------- Post added at 03:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:41 PM ----------

If we are dealing with assumptions here, why not assume that, left to live his life the next few years and without guidance from the FBI, that this young man might have had a turnaround in his thinking?

woopsie. sorry to mess with your assumptions, but assumptions are unfaithful like that.

Well, and that's one of the things I found convenient about this--this all coalesced right after the bodyscanner issue was really starting to shape up in public discourse.

Probably because this guy made a comment about wanting to kill a bunch of people that someone took seriously enough to tip off the FBI. I haven't read anything about the FBI setting up a storefront with a banner saying 'Terrorists wanted, apply within'. If he had the intent to kill a bunch of people at a public gathering, then yes, he ranks rather highly on the list of dangerous people. I don't think there's anything arbitrary about this except for the guy making the mistake of talking to the wrong person.

All I've read about this was that the guy had a cell phone that he seriously believed was going to set off a bomb. Furthermore, the FBI reportedly gave him the opportunity to change his mind. So the responsibility for this is his, and he's going to get what he deserves.

Who knows what he would have done in the next few years? Since he was serious about doing this now, the FBI was right to make sure he doesn't get a chance to do it later when he wasn't being watched so closely. It's not like the FBI agents pinned him to the ground and forced him to dial that cell phone.

So the fellow in Times Square we should have waited until then? Based on what you are saying, that's what we should have done. We are just lucky that device didn't actually explode and kill/maim people. So no prevention just swoop in at the nick of time like Jack Bauer?

the times square bomber.......did the feds give him a bomb? Did the feds contact him and tell him they could help him?

There was no plan, there was no bomb until the FBI became involved. It's not a terribly nuanced argument I am making. I question the legitimacy of the FBI creating from scratch favorable environments for arrest. It's certainly worth some skepticism, I think.

I think it is nuanced. I don't have a plan to go out and do drugs, but I do have a propensity to do them. If offered and I accept and take them am I not responsible for my actions? Or is it the fault of the other guy?


Is that not where the crime starts here?

The issue here isn't whether Mohamed Osman Mohamud did anything illegal. Clearly, attempting to blow up a tree lighting ceremony is illegal, and I have no doubt he will be held accountable.

The issue for me is whether it is an effective antiterrorism strategy for the FBI to be going out and actively recruiting emotionally unstable kids into terrorist plots and then arresting them.

There is no shortage of emotionally unstable children in the US, especially in the subset of US citizens that were born in Somalia. The fact that a large organization with extralegal privileges can convince a fucked up kid to do something stupid doesn't in and of itself make us safer. It's low hanging fruit.

Right, I'm not saying that he is not responsible for his actions. I'm questioning whether 1) it is appropriate for the FBI to create a crime for someone to commit when they made no movements on their own to perpetrate one (particularly one as serious as the killing of thousands of people) and 2) whether it is an effective use of resources.

I stand behind filtherton's comments about this man in particular, as well.

Thanks MM, that's what I was making sure I understood from your post.

Just to clarify, if they pose as arms/drug/assassination dealers and they got approached it would be clear in your book? Or it's still not effective use to see that maybe if he was shopping it never could have been picked up on any radar whatsoever?

filth, are you suggesting that we send the emotionally unstable kids to therapy?

Yes, but I acknowledge the irony and the controversy. I think more people would be harmed in general if law enforcement did not have this special privilege. I think is necessary in certain cases and it gives law enforcement an advantage over criminals. It has been a legal and accepted practice for as long as I can remember.

If we take away the tools of law enforcement, it makes them less effective.

I think the majority of FBI agents are honest and decent people who are looking to protect the people of the United States. I almost became an FBI agent myself after college. They were recruiting on my campus for forensic accountants.

No, I wasn't. But, therapy probably would have been cheaper than paying informants and undercover FBI agents to set him up. It would definitely have been cheaper than incarceration. It could create some goodwill between the federal government and members of at-risk populations. Hell, if the therapy was successful, you might even end up with someone who has credibility amongst at risk folk who'd be willing to steer them away from the dark side.

Actually, what I was getting at was the fact that emotionally troubled individuals are easily manipulated. The fact that the FBI found some sucker and tricked him into attempting to detonate a fake bomb doesn't mean that you or I are any safer from terrorists.

There is no shortage of suckers. The FBI should let us know when they find terrorists who are willing and capable of finding suckers who will detonate real bombs, because these folks are the ones we should actually be worried about.

I think that when viewed from afar the FBI's actions have more merit. The effect of such operations, especially the several high profile ones recently announced, is to severely hamper the operations of groups and individuals who are legitimate threats by increasing their paranoia and hampering their ability to access funds and materials.

They make us safer, it is just a matter of whether you consider that safety worth the infringement on the rights of the individual in question (still up in the air for me until I get more information).

This is what they did in this case. They found somone who would have detonated a real bomb to kill people.

I personally think this position is rather pathetic. It shows you have zero concept of equal protection under the laws and that you view government/law enforcement as your caretakers instead of your employees. It shouldn't matter what you think the 'majority' of FBI agents are or not. It also shouldn't matter if it's been an accepted practice as long as you can remember or not. Slavery was an accepted practice for centuries also, did that make it alright?

It is completely illogical to expect fair and equal protection under the laws of the US Constitution and yet provide an exception for law enforcement to break the laws to enforce the laws.

I disagree. In this situation, the FBI acted as a stand-in for the type of person they should be focusing on. It's the difference between busting the proverbial drug dealer on the corner vs. the person who supplies the drug dealer on the corner with drugs.

There are a lot of people who have at some point in their life had the potential to detonate a bomb and kill people. Few of them actually do. Maybe some of them end up serving in the armed forces, where their proclivities can be put to a more socially acceptable use. The point being that the ability to find and convince someone to do something stupid and then punish them for doing something stupid doesn't actually reduce the amount of stupidity in the world. Most stupid people eventually wise up without royally fucking up their lives and the lives of those around them.

Is there any evidence that this guy would have done any harm if left alone? I'm sure they FBI would have us think so, but they're hardly impartial observers in this; they're selling their perspective just like everyone else.

It could be argued that operations like this can effect future recruitment, but I don't know if I buy that (not that my opinion matters for shit here). We live in a country where paranoia over this type of thing is rampant, and there doesn't seem to be a shortage of impressionable youngsters with an axe to grind against the status quo.

isn't that the crux of the matter here, really....potential is not a crime. you can't act against potential because it's just that.

seems to me that "law enforcement" is necessarily a reactive game and that military action is more proactive and that somewhere along the line the distinction has gotten blurred and so now we're seeing police trying to act as if they were in a military.

but war is not about guilt and cannot be about guilt---it's about strategic conflict with an adversary. so potentials are not for criminal action---they are about tactical advantage or disadvantage. and it doesn't really matter if the people you kill are or are not actively engaged in imposing a disadvantage. (back in the day of vertically oriented militaries fighting each other things were easier because the uniform was a fair-game target)...

potential can only be acted upon is the frame allows for intent to drop away as a problem-but if intent drops away, so does the idea of crime.

logically, you can see why police departments would want to expand that reactiveness though, why they would push at it---from the statistics-based, governmentality viewpoint anyway, entrapment would be just one of a range of kinds of actions they'd undertake in order to manage the disparity between police and population in terms of numbers. and then there's the old robert gates l.a. p.d. model which just says fuck it, the police are a paramilitary. but there are alot of problems with this.

Where's the bad guy's personal responsibility to not trigger the bomb in this case? Nobody made him dial the cell phone, and by the accounts I've read, the FBI people with him gave him at least one opportunity to back out, asking him if he was sure he really wanted to trigger the bomb and kill a bunch of people.

Based on what made the news reports, this guy was angry enough to want to kill a bunch of people and the FBI got wind of it.

Basically, bad guy wanted to kill some people, FBI hears about it and sets up a sting. Bad guy doesn't realize he's set up, triggers what he thinks is a real bomb and gets caught. Bad guy hopefully goes to jail for a long time. End of story.

For fuck's sake. Could you at least read what I've been writing before you accuse me of discounting the dude's personal responsibility? You're like a broken record.

If they had infiltrated a group he was in and allowed him to come to them then, yes, I think that is different. That's clearly not what happened here and if that tactic had been used in other non-Muslim terrorism scenarios - the FBI putting a weapon, even an inactive one, into the hands of a young man - I don't think it's a stretch to suppose that the public reaction might be different.

I'm not sure what you're asking in your second question, but he was already on their radar and he had made no moves to actually do anything until the FBI became involved. Which brings up the issue of effective use of resources. Is it effective to frame someone who has been watched for years who makes no move to commit a crime on their own?

I didn't scroll back far enough, just saw your latest post. Anyway, I have no problem with the FBI leading this guy down the path to jail, regardless what this guy's problem was. Maybe he would have really blown something up later if he had a second chance. I don't think it's law enforcement's responsibility to provide counseling or whatever to every wannabe bad guy they find.

Or, conversely, they will be encouraged by the fact that the FBI spent years watching and then framing someone that none of them had ever heard of.

---------- Post added at 09:19 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:13 AM ----------

Knowing how bureaucracies work (to a civilian extent of course) I don't find it difficult to imagine that the folks watching this guy were at a point where they either had to stop watching him or bust him on something. So they busted him. Merry Christmas, America.

i see the theory and definition of 'entrapment' has sailed right over your head or through your ears.

I see and fully understand the theory of entrapment but I still call bullshit.

If I give you 5000 dollars, a target, a gun, bullets, a clear shooting lane, a getaway car, and a map out of town, it's still your decision to pull the trigger...

I don't understand why it's so difficult to separate the culpability of the suspect from the legitimate questions about what this operation accomplished.