Meet a Jihobbyist: Week 1 Analysis

[Valin]

Jarret Brachman.net:

10/1/10

If you saw the sci-fi, dystopian movie, Minority Report, you probably walked out of the theater revolted by the prospect of a future where the government could arrest people before they even knew that they wanted to commit a crime.

We generally agree that it’s a good thing that the government can’t arrest people before they have the intention of committing a crime. In fact, even having the intention to commit a crime is often not enough to prosecute that person much less obtain a warrant to monitor their communications, and again, we agree that it’s a good thing….

…at least until a terrorist attack occurs. It’s at that point that publics tend to lurch in the other direction, demanding answers to why law enforcement wasn’t more proactive in conducting surveillance, or why intelligence agencies weren’t more preemptively aggressive in recognizing pre-operational indicators and warnings.

The problem with our current approach to thinking about al-Qaeda is that it’s not aligned with the reality of al-Qaeda. The conventional approach to thinking about terrorism is fundamentally premised on a false dichotomy: there are terrorists (who do illegal stuff) and not terrorists (who are not doing illegal stuff). We should care about stopping the illegal stuff and, if we have time, think about how the legal stuff gets people to do illegal stuff.

(Snip)

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Really Good Stuff!! Do yourself a favor....please read.