FBI Turns 18-Year-Old with an IQ of 51 into a Terrorist
techdirt.com
techdirt.com
Wait, no, that's the Salem witch trials, for some reason I always mix up terrorism accusations in 2015, and the Salem witch trials from 1692...
A lot of these cases seem to come up. They seem to fall into two "camps," legitimately dangerous individuals collecting resources for a future event (guns, bombs, etc) and fishing expeditions where they try to borderline entrap the gullible or stupid.
The question is: Do the agents not ever question what they're doing morally? If you need to talk someone into committing a crime are you really serving justice? And if you aren't serving justice then what is the point in any of it?
Somewhat perhaps, but the victims are morally inferior to the agents, so the ends (career advancement for the morally superior agents) justify the means (unjust oppression of the inferior). It's a lot like when Islamist terrorists justify the killing of kafirs; but it's okay in this case because the injustice is committed by educated people wearing nice clothes, and for a good reason (justice!, or the children, maybe? or something else which I can't recall at the moment but I'm sure it's good for America).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32521780
> Commander Richard Walton, head of the Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command, said: "We continue to appeal to anyone who may have knowledge of people with similar intentions. The earliest we can intervene to prevent terrorism the better.
> "We also remind the public that there is currently a need to protect vulnerable or impressionable adults or children from this brand of Islamic extremism."
There's lots of really terrible[2] things about the way the UK treats people with learning disability, but we try not to imprison them for stuff other people manipulated them into.
[1] UK usage, this is taking over from "learning disability" because that community strongly rejects the disabled label. It used to be defined by low IQ.
[2] Winterborn view, Mazars, etc etc. There's a long list of terrible care homes providing abusive horrible care.
And I would've said that most of these plots foiled by the FBI come as close as possible to entrapment without actually being so. They provide means, methods, opportunities, and it seems in some cases plenty of motive but not the initial spark.
Maybe it's my own cognitive dissonance about the difference in what the law is and what I think it ought to be, but I don't have a favorable opinion of lawcomic. Now you've posted it here in defense of the prosecution of a mentally retarded man/child for an offence which he is probably incapable of committing without a non-trivial degree of assistance, and most likely would not have committed if he'd simply been left alone. Even though this case the prosecution may prevail in court, IMO it does not serve any useful purpose for the gov't to aggressively ferret out easily manipulable people by manipulating them until they sufficiently incriminate themselves.
I should clarify that I do not condone the actions of law enforcement here. I just think that I think lawcomic is an interesting introductory resource.
I'm sure the Muslim version of him would be into jihad. Going to arrest a lot of people if you start locking them up...