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Entrapment or saving us from terrorism?
This is a question I've had for a couple weeks now, ever since the FBI arrested Mohamed Mohamud for an attempted bombing at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland (read more here: FBI thwarts terrorist bombing attempt at Portland holiday tree lighting, authorities say | OregonLive.com). For those who don't know, Mohamed Mohamud was a sometimes student at the university I graduated from, so this story is very close to home, and it has been kind of surreal to have this all going on in my own backyard. It's also strange to have people overreact and declare that everyone at the treelighting could have died--um, no, they couldn't have, the bomb was a fake. I've had a lot of problems with the language used in the media to describe this case; take the article I posted above. The headline is "FBI thwarts terrorist bombing attempt at Portland holiday tree lighting, authorities say"--in my mind, the FBI didn't thwart anything; they gave a guy a fake bomb, after all.
There was a piece in the NYTimes wherein AG Holder says that these kinds of stings are necessary to protect the American people from terrorism. Quote:
Share your thoughts, but please remember, this is not in Politics for a reason. |
If the FBI was actively pushing/encouraging this person to do this, then thats wrong.
If the FBI merely gave him the opportunity and he ran with it, then the FBI did a good job. |
from what i read a few weeks ago, the FBI put a mole into the mosque. He then went about his work encouraging this guy (and others?) to violent jihad and egged this guy on by providing him with the resources to potentially carryout an attack. i dont know how long this went on for.
if the FBI put the thought in his head, then i think its entrapment. If they are creating dramas to keep themselves in a job and to look like they're doing a good job by protecting the citizens of oregon, then i think the FBI has a case to answer for. I just ownder how many seeds they planed before they got a bite. i wonder what those guys that didnt get arrested are thinking. On the other hand if the FBI had previous information and then set up the sting, i see no issues with the arrest and deserves the full force of the law. ---------- Post added at 03:51 AM ---------- Previous post was at 03:50 AM ---------- snowy, did you go the the cross culture vigil held at the mosque after the fire by any chance? |
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there are a bunch of questions at the least about this.
first, it's inevitably a political matter because what you make of the fbi actions has everything to do with what you make of this "war on terror" charade. kinda on the same order as what you make of the bombings in yemen. if you're inclined to see the "war on terror" as a legitimate rationale for action, then if you problems with holder's statement of this morning (and what they're about), they're likely to be more narrow than they would be if you don't see the "war on terror" as legitimate. i'm inclined toward the second position. from the narrower perspective, the obvious question is whether this is or is not entrapment. which would make of it the kind of thing that happens all the time in, say, cocaine interdiction efforts where small-time dealers (typically) are set up in "sting" operations that walk the same kind of line---because once you're stung, questions of whether you were a legit target (following on some profile or another presumably) drop away behind the fact of being-stung, and the argument shifts away from whether the operation as a whole is a Problem and onto whether in particular situation x the cops went too far in setting up the conditions that enabled the outcome. i think this kind of proactive operation from the cops or fbi are bound to be problems for that reason, even if you accept arguments about their utility (i don't in the main) and legality (which seems to me questionable, but i'm not an expert). but this is the narrower set of problems. there's a bigger one with the de facto criminalization---or at least bringing-under-suspicion---of folk who fit a particular racial profile and happen to be muslim in the states. and the statement holder made is pretty bush-worthy in it's vagueness. but that'd be political. i seem to have restated the op. ah well. i read this article in the washington post about the same thing: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2010121007763 which highlights several other...um...ambiguities about holder's line. like whether this "reaching out to the muslim community" business actually exists. commentary in the article from folk who are closer than i to the matter. |
When someone reports to the police that they know someone is looking for a hitman, the police setup a sting. People are convicted by making the deal with the undercover cop "hitman."
This is an example that I would use to explain the FBI's actions based on what I have read about this story. The guy was willing to commit an act of terror or horrific crime (depending on your political view) and was caught before it could take place. I hope that the FBI/law enforcement continues to protect us in this way. I'll vote "save us from terrorism." |
from another angle...
you're standing at the box office waiting to purchase your tickets for the knicks game. psssst! comes the call......some guy calls you over ..hey whats up you reply you want to buy some tickets to the game? no thanks...im taking my son to the game and we're still in line yoo bad dude, you could have saved yourself 50% on costs no thanks well think about it..if you want them you can have them right now and you can get out of the cold yeah..sure..ok how much...as you pull out your wallet YOUR UNDER ARREST ASSHOLE! entrapment? is it fair? i dunno.. you decide |
Not really another angle. The person in line had the intent of buying the tickets.
It would be another matter if the seller harassed/harangued/peer pressure the first guy into buying the tickets. |
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If 'thought crimes' are your thing, then you're in the majority of the sheeple of this country. |
Depends. You really have to read the trial transcript to see whether the individual in question was predisposed towards blowing Americans up, or, if it was planted there by the FBI.
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Yea...the government lies...doesn't mean I need a tinfoil hat, either.
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come on. |
No, I'm trying to say that 'truth' and 'justice' are not black and white, and while I despise government overreaching and government misconduct, neither you nor I are in the position to say that the government entrapped this kid in this case.
In addition, invocations of 'The Government Lies!' doesn't automatically make this a case of entrapment. Do you know how much 'egging on' really happened in this case? Was this a case of, 'here's a bomb, let's sit back and see what ya do with it kid?' or one where law enforcement kept on telling the kid to blow shit up even when the kid expressed reservation? There's a reason why depositions and interviews and discoveries take not hours, not days, but months--it's to bring forth relevant factors like the above to light. Again, as shitty as the government and populace may be, no one can definitively say it was entrapment until they actually see all the evidence. |
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I can't help but wonder how efficient a use of time it is to write the stories of potential terrorist attacks, make them happen and then swoop in to make arrests when it's probably not a stretch to imagine that there are plenty of folks planning terrorist attacks without the FBI's help.
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I'm pretty sure the delinquent would have gone through with it with or without the FBI's help ala VA Tech style or something similar.
All this disdain towards the feds is misdirected. People constantly complain. Why weren't the terrorist plans foiled?? They then complain when they were. I don't understand you people. |
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You agree that that he took action to detonate a bomb that he thought would have killed people. If the guys who sold him the bomb were not the FBI and actual terrorists, what do you think would have happend?
This a technique used by law enforcement officials to catch people before real action kills people. It is my understanding that we disagree on whether this strategy should be used or not by law enforcement. Do you have another practical solution that could be used instead of this technique that would be equally effective? |
Hey kid! You want to kill a lot of people? Yeah, ok.
He then follows through. Put him away until he is safe to play with others. |
Is this just like the police playing undercover prostitutes, drug dealers, and underage kids on-line? The cops play a role, the criminal comes to them to make it happen.
I would say it is entrapment if the FBI said, "do this or someone else will", or "do this or I'll kill your family". |
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the more i think about it the more difficulty i have not seeing this as entrapment.
i am on my way out, but would be curious if someone could explain exactly what the legal definition of entrapment is....i have a dilletante's idea of it. |
In criminal law, entrapment is constituted by a law enforcement agent inducing a person to commit an offense that the person would otherwise have been unlikely to commit.[1] In many jurisdictions, entrapment is a possible defense against criminal liability. However, there is no entrapment where a person is ready and willing to break the law and the government agents merely provide what appears to be a favorable opportunity for the person to commit the crime. For example, it is not entrapment for a government agent to pretend to be someone else and to offer, either directly or through an informant or other decoy, to engage in an unlawful transaction with the person (see sting operation). So, a person would not be a victim of entrapment if the person was ready, willing and able to commit the crime charged in the indictment whenever opportunity was afforded, and that Government officers or their agents did no more than offer an opportunity.
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entrapment |
NYC does not have anti-entrapment laws.
If a person driving stops to ask someone directions and that person is an undercover hooker, they can and have arrested people for solicitation. As they defend the position that it is about opportunity and it was given and the person took the opportunity. |
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Oh and...I thought you guys all knew the legal defense of entrapment. Here I was making my case wondering why people didn't understand what I was saying. ---------- Post added at 05:47 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:38 PM ---------- Yep: Oregon Statute Regarding Entrapment Quote:
(a) Subjective Theory: That if the individual can show some form of 'inducement' by the government, then the government must show predisposition towards committing the crime (i.e. previous criminal record, initiating contact, etc.) to overcome the entrapment defense. (b) Objective Theory: That entrapment is a deterrence to law enforcement wrongdoing (much like 4th Amendment remedies) and thus, if there is any evidence of LEO inducement, entrapment operates as a complete defense. Etc. etc. Like I said, I want to see all statements made by all parties involved. I would not rush to conclusions. |
They try to use it as a defense and it usually fails. It is up to the judge to determine if there was entrapment. Usually the judge tends to side with the police in NY.
In CA the standards are different where there are laws on the books that prohibit or define certain kinds of situations that constitute entrapment. Quote:
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I do not have the facts to judge whether this is entrapment, but I do know that this kid pushed a button on a cell phone thinking that it would kill or maim hundreds of people. That rises above the level of a thought crime IMHO.
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If he hit the button, thinking he was going to kill people through this action, then he is guilty and its not entrapment by any means.... If he never got to that point, then its questionable, based IMHO, which is certainly not a legal opinion mind you, on how far he went.....
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For example, I hope terrorists do not get their hands on nuclear material. I want it to be especially difficult for terrorists to trust anyone with nuclear material for sale. This should make it more difficult to source (i.e. limit their means to action) and to identify those that wish to obtain nuclear material illegally. I see sting operations as a key strategy to use in this case. The goal is to deter terrorists from taking action. I am using the definition for entrapment that I found online for the sake of this discussion. I have not gone any further than a quick google search. |
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I don't advocate thought crimes and I don't see that someone thinking of killing someone is an actionable offense. I do see that once they cross the boundary of thinking about it and into the realm of ACTING upon it. Acting upon it is seeking out resources and methods to execute the action. Reading materials about resources and methods still is in the realm of thinking about it. Actually securing the items you need to execute? That's beyond thought. You don't agree? |
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I repeat, the GOVERNMENT provided the items for this individual to attempt his attack. |
The Associated Press: Teen arrested in Oregon car bomb plot led 2 lives
After reading this fairly dry AP recounting of the story, I am left (still) with the conclusion that 'fighting terrorism' in this way is just an exercise and that it doesn't make us safer. Not every person who becomes radicalized is going to be a threat. After all, we have plenty of radicalized white people in this country, too. What's more, they've known about the guy for years apparently and could have simply continued to monitor him. It seems to me that, rather than a legitimate effort to waylay danger, this operation has simply been an opportunity to make a showy arrest on terrorism charges near the holidays. Yay, I feel so much safer. |
I wonder how much of this stems from being guilty of "worshiping while brown."
I mean, you follow and prod young American Muslims and it's just a matter of time before you find a radical. It's more or less the practice of weeding out the alienated youth of American Muslim society. But instead of finding solutions as to why they become alienated or how to reintegrate them into wider society, they find out ways to criminalize them to neutralize them as "potential threats." |
It should be obvious that preventing terrorism by arresting a person who only became a terrorist as a result of your terrorism prevention efforts does't by itself have the net effect of decreasing the number of terrorist attacks.
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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. |
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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 ---------- Quote:
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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 ---------- Quote:
Do you still think it is a crime if the someone sought out ended up being a government agent? |
*Facepalm*
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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... |
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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. |
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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? |
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---------- 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. |
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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. Quote:
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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. |
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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? |
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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. |
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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. |
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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). |
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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. |
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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. |
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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. |
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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? |
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---------- 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. |
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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.
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Also, one of the things that's bothered me about this whole situation is the age of the subject. This is kind of related to filtherton's reference to emotionally unstable teenagers. We know from studies of the frontal lobe that it is not fully developed until the mid-20s--and the frontal lobe controls executive functioning, decision-making, and the weighing of consequences, among other things. Who's to say that this kid would have carried out these actions had the FBI not gotten involved? Perhaps, over time, his brain would have developed further and he would have realized the consequences for the actions he was thinking of. |
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Could this type of entrapment, also be considered a form of incitement?
I'm tending towards believing so. Hard tellin' not knowin' how the feds actually operated in this instance. I dunno. |
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What I said was that it would likely have been cheaper and at least as effective (with respect to making us safer from terrorism) if some sort of non-arresty intervention had occurred. |
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