Hacker News Reader

Comment by zaroth | Hacker News Reader

> "These people are five steps away from being a danger to the United States."

I'd say they are one step away. They have the motive and opportunity but they lack the means.

It seems to me there's a element of 'scale' in an entrapment defense. The cop tail-gated me so I sped up and then got ticketed for speeding -- perhaps I was entrapped to speed. It's not so hard to push someone over the edge to commit relatively minor offenses. But can you really entrap someone into launching a surface-to-surface missile at a air base? You can certainly coerce someone into that by threatening their life or their family, but that's not entrapment.

I don't see how providing any amount of weapons or money or fake explosives could entrap someone into being a jihadist.

Now, TFA raises the question of mental illness. I think if they are so mentally ill that they went along with the plot without understanding what they were doing, then they are either not competent to stand trial, or insane enough to try it as a defense.

I think it's a very low ROI approach for the FBI and mostly they are wasting their time providing the means for "nobody-wannabe-terrorists" to become actual terrorists, but my understanding is they record these guys actually pushing the detonator on their fake-bombs and they are ready to die to kill civilians, so I can't say I'm sympathetic.

View on HN

> can you really entrap someone into launching a surface-to-surface missile at a air base?

AFAIK these people don't commit the crimes (the FBI doesn't want the violent acts to actually occur), they just are involved in planning them.

Can you entrap a vulnerable person into participating in a plot, by making them feel important or valuable or threatened or as if their problems will be solved, or by making them feel that they are otherwise going against the group social norms? I'd say: Definitely yes.

Consider that humans are generally easily, predictably persuadable:

* Many human trafficking victims are 'entrapped' by their pimps, unwilling to leave and persuaded that the pimps love them - it's not an anomaly but standard procedure for the pimps, who seek out vulnerable young women.

* In another field, there is research that a large number of confessions, even to serious crimes, are false. People somehow break down after hours of interrogation and confess to things that never happened.

* Soldiers in large numbers are trained to kill, and often for very bad causes (look at militaries around the world and throughout history).

* Look up Stanly Milgram's famous experiments where people were persuaded to torture others.

> Consider that humans are generally easily, predictably persuadable

That may be true, but it undermines much of the legal code. A 'predictably persuadable' person can be talked into giving someone a ride, that person commits a homicide in the commission of a robbery, and then the 'predictably persuadable' person is legally responsible for the murder as well.

So, you may be correct that we need a more sophisticated understanding of mens rea into our legal code, but the premise of your objection is fairly far-reaching. We should be deliberate and thoughtful about embracing it fully, even if it is true and fair.

I agree regarding how it applies to the legal code (EDIT: though the law has allowances for these things too), but at the same time we need to be realistic; the legal code isn't reality. And we need to be responsible: We can't just say that because it's legal then it's ok.

The FBI has a choice; it doesn't need to pursue these people. Prosecutors can decline to prosecute. Juries can temper their conclusions and judges can temper their sentences. Etc.

> We can't just say that because it's legal then it's ok.

Absolutely. I say this all the time.

> Prosecutors can decline to prosecute.

But prosecutors can also choose to prosecute. When there's that much give in the legal code (giving a ride falls between 'no charge' and the death penalty), there's a lot of room for abuse and corruption. It might be worth giving up the ability to execute people for guarding (terrorist) warehouses for the assurance that we are governed by laws and not by (fickle, prejudiced, and corruptible) men.

>Absolutely. I say this all the time.

well you are not doing anything to improve the laws and society then. Given than logic we'd still have slavery and sodomy laws among other things...

The legal code and the justice system need overhauling for a whole bunch of other reason, anyway.

None of GP's points would necessarily absolve a suggestible accomplice of a crime that actually occurred. The FBI's cases, on the other hand, were entirely fictitious except for the suggestible person.

It would certainly be a strong case if a suspect had actively sought the final ingredients of a self-planned act of terror, which would have killed people had the FBI not responded to the call first with fake equipment. But the objection in these cases is that when you subtract the FBI-provided motivation, plans, and equipment, all that's left are the person's own suggestibility and weak moral compass. Those don't constitute a criminal act in themselves. Experts could argue that they aren't likely to have ever resulted in one.

The religious targeting aspect is even more unfair. As far as I know, the FBI isn't spending similar time and resources to identify disaffected and suggestible non-Muslims, and then convincing them of the glory and honor awaiting them if only they would help push a button to bomb a local mosque.

Edit: In the above example, the "predictably persuadable" person isn't criminally responsible for murder if the ride was given to an FBI agent, and there was no actual robbery or murder.

> AFAIK these people don't commit the crimes (the FBI doesn't want the violent acts to actually occur), they just are involved in planning them.

Without any concrete actions, how does this so called "planning" differ from bragging?

> AFAIK these people don't commit the crimes (the FBI doesn't want the violent acts to actually occur), they just are involved in planning them.

In some cases they attempt to explode what they think are real bombs.

I've read that conspiracy charges do not always require an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy, unless it's a government agent who suggests it. In those cases an overt act in furtherance is always required.

The cases I recall involved fake-bombs that the suspect tried to detonate. [1] Some other responses down thread include much more dubious actions by the co-conspirators which shines a much more concerning light on this FBI practice.

[1] - https://news.vice.com/article/isis-fake-bomb-terrorist-fbi-s...

Also,

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/terroris...

Some are real bombs. Like 1993. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbWKbbNKuc8

> But can you really entrap someone into launching a surface-to-surface missile at a air base?

Easily. If you've seen these cases you'd notice they specifically try to find and groom people who have a mental disease, are under stress or just simply seem to be easily manipulated and controlled.

You can entrap someone into launching a missile. Becoming a pink elephant. Or doing all kinds of strange things.

Heck, clerics from 3rd world countries manage to convince young men that they should blow themselves up. If they can do it without training and education, FBI can do it better.

This is not new and has been happening for a while. My favorite case is this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12...

FBI sends their man a mosque. He starts agitating and promoting terrorism, trying to recruit people. Congregation files a restraining order against him and reports him to the ... that's right, FBI.

Bottom line is, if your job, mission and funding depends on fighting terrorism, at some point they'd manufacture a bit of that in order to keep getting more support and funding.

TSA would do it too, if they were higher up on the ladder. But they are not. FBI is high enough to do it and get away with it. Kind of like NSA is high enough up to not have to follow laws and get away with whatever they want when it come to surveillance.

> If they can do it without training and education

You don't have to go to school to learn how to manipulate people.

But if you do go to school you'll be that much better at manipulating people. And FBI certainly went to school.

Given the resources the FBI puts into each one of these cases, it's clear they're targeting people whose main crime is "being suggestible". There is effectively an unbounded supply of those in a country of 400 million. They don't seem to care about finding those who would actually be handling the hypothetical recruitment or financing, because they don't really exist - that pattern of an externally-recruited terrorist cell is extremely rare. Approximately all instances of Islamic terrorism in the US have been either true self-starters, or people who were radicalized / recruited / trained overseas and sent to the US for attacks.

"I think it's a very low ROI approach for the FBI"

Wrong. Creating these instances is extremely, hugely profitable in the form of increased funding for anti-terrorism.

I see what you are saying on the rest, and thats the response I would expect from an intelligent person that is uneducated on the subject. The fact is that they are not getting jihadists the means and then grabbing them, they are preying on poor people and promising them money through corrupt informants who usually participate in the plot up until the last minute and then get off scot-free. A good primer book on the subject, along with some of the lectures from the author:

https://www.amazon.com/Terror-Factory-Inside-Manufactured-Te...

I started my military career in anti-terrorism, back before they had to change the very definition because they realized it applied to them quite often. You want to know the terrorists I'm the most afraid of, and I think America should be? The ones in suits and ties, on Wall Street and in DC. I'm not afraid of men in thwabs doing dastardly things, and even if they did, it's such an outlier and small scope/scale it's a drop in terror bucket compared the financial terrorists.

>>Wrong. Creating these instances is extremely, hugely profitable in the form of increased funding for anti-terrorism.

Without knowing exactly how much it costs to manufacture the instances and then calculating how much funding is received per instance, how can you say they are "hugely profitable"? I can't imagine that training corrupt informants, organizing the plots, managing the activities and providing the supplies would be cheap.

Realistically, only the top-most officials in the FBI probably see a real cost-benefit analysis of the program. And, for all we know, they may be operating in the red, but continuing the program due to the intangible benefits it provides the FBI (e.g. increased authority).

There are a lot of 'serious' offences that don't involve hurting people. A few high-school nerds 'plot' to blow up the moon, no big deal. A few disgruntled people 'plot' to blow up a bridge = prison.

The FBI get's away with charging people with Pre-crime for attacks that probably would not have happened.

It's an old tactic. Angry, but non violent people can challenge the system. But, add an Agent Provocateur and you can flip things around so they seem like they are the problem.

PS: Also, the coercion / inducement line get's tricky. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Watch "The Newburgh Sting". The lengths that the FBI went to entrap those guys was ridiculous. They had a guy who was constantly searching out suspects and badgering them into joining a plot that they never would have had any ability to pull off on their own. It took over a year of him convincing them, giving them money, providing all the means for their "atttack". They guys were angry muslims, but far less motivated or capable than the thousands of mostly white militias who have very anti-government views and lots of weapons. They were at the same anger level of a lot of right wing conspiracy theorists, except they were Muslims.

I don't think it's always so clearly a terrorism plot. The "Fort Dix Five" basically just bought illegal guns in a deal set up by an informant fearing deportation.

"In court, central FBI informant Mahmoud Omar confessed that Shain and Dritan did not know about the plan to attack Fort Dix."

https://theintercept.com/2015/06/25/fort-dix-five-terror-plo...

I read the whole article, this is definitely a very different thing than providing a fake car bomb and recording the guy pushing the detonator.

In this case we see a long and concerted effort to implicate these brothers in a plot that they apparently knew nothing about. They were convicted, it seems, primarily based on the jihadist videos they watched (which were played for the jury, which included a parent who lost their son in Afghanistan, who later commented how one of the videos showing Americans being shot made him think it was his son being shot).

And even worse, in this case it seems like it was as much (if not primarily) about winning political points, for example, for then US Attorney Chris Christie.

So while I had read about some more clear-cut cases which seemed to involve an appropriate use of under-cover officers and informants, this case certainly seems to go far beyond that point, and exploited emotional jurists to win a very dubious conviction.

> I'd say they are one step away. They have the motive and opportunity but they lack the means.

Motive, opportunity, and means do not conclude that a crime will or must occur. Full stop. These are indicators used AFTER a crime has occurred to indicate that an individual likely perpetrated the crime in the american court system.

If someone disrespects me by shoving me or yelling at me while we are alone, and I happen to have the pocket knife I always carry, then I have motive, opportunity, and means to conduct an assault with a deadly weapon. Somehow I manage to avoid being arrested for things that I could do every single day. How do I manage this? I don't stab people.

I agree completely. In the context of having a recording of the suspect trying to detonate a fake bomb, in that case I was thinking it's like the FBI provided the means, while the target had the motive and opportunity.

What I've learned from the other responses is that in many cases there is no smoking fake-gun, but just a dubious conspiracy to commit murder which the alleged participants may not have even been fully aware of.

The theory is that the FBI is trying to get to these people before someone else does.

The flaw in that argument is that focussing on finding people that the FBI can go to great lengths to convince to commit a terror plot, when the FBI is providing the supplies, the plan, the timing, the intel, the guns, the bombs, everything, means they're not focussing on people who are actually out there trying to convince people to become terrorists.

So they're burning out any chance of goodwill with the muslim community because the FBI is secretly infiltrating otherwise innocent communities to try to convince them to do something illegal so they can arrest them, they're letting actual terrorists continue to act while they try to manufacture patsies to arrest instead, and they're actively creating people who are disenfranchised and hate the government out of a) the people they're turning into terrorists, and b) the people who like those people (e.g. other people at the mosque) who watch the FBI turn someone and then arrest them.

In other words, the FBI is doing more harm than good in the long term.

> They have the motive and opportunity but they lack the means

This seems to be a very confused application of evidentiary requirements. Before we talk above motive, opportunity, and means, we talk about the act itself. Every time a person bumps me on the subway when I have a pocket knife, I have motive, means, and opportunity to murder them, but unless I commit the act, that is not even the least bit interesting in terms of whether I am a murderer.

Unless you're insane, I don't think you have motive to kill someone who bumps into you on the subway.

> You can certainly coerce someone into that by threatening their life or their family, but that's not entrapment.

umm, is that not the very legal definition of entrapment? If an LEO threatens your life or your family to get you to commit a crime, you have a very reasonable defense to saying you would not have committed the crime had your life or family not been threatened.

I'm no expert, but I'd call that coercion, where the victim knows they are being forced to do something they don't want to do. Entrapment is about tricking the victim into doing something that they wouldn't have done on their own.

The FBI is doing the same thing that terrorist leaders do: pushing misguided and easily influenced people into performing terrorist acts. The FBI is not likely to catch any of the leaders this way, just the grunts.

Grunts make good headlines. The FBI/CIA/NSA already failed at 9/11, so they've learned to use citizens to prop up their image.

Entrapment is when a LEO induces a person to commit a crime that they were previously not disposed to commit. Therefore, if the person has shown no inclination to commit a crime, then it seems that coercion could be a subtype of entrapment.

However, when criminal informants are used rather than LEO's to perform the coercion, that wouldn't be entrapment .

> However, when criminal informants are used rather than LEO's to perform the coercion, that wouldn't be entrapment .

An LEO using a "criminal informant" as an intermediary agent to coerce a target into committing a crime is still an LEO inducing the person to commit the crime.

With all the bashing FBI receives they are for the most part operating within the framework of the law.

In some countries just conspiring to commit a terrorist act can lead to a conviction, so in a way you can say that FBI is 'forced' to operate this way to get a conviction for a would be terrorist.

> In some countries just conspiring to commit a terrorist act can lead to a conviction

Like the US

To actually get this type of conviction there has to be TONS of hard evidence to the point where in layman terms things are beyond what is typically considered 'conspiring'.

For example, this dude got convicted for 'conspiracy and other offences' after his buddies were 'firing assault rifles at security personnel and law enforcement officers' and ended up getting killed.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/phoenix-man-convicted-conspir...

Not true, look at the Mehanna case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarek_Mehanna

or the Al-Arian case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sami_Al-Arian

Both cases involved deliberate actions by the defendants classified as illegal, hence the conviction.

Not to mention things like '...20,000 hours of dialogue from 472,000 wiretapped telephone conversations on 18 tapped lines gathered from 1994 to 2003', multiple court appearances etc etc.

This just goes to demonstrate exactly why FBI is doing things the way the article describes.

>for the most part

That's not enough. The FBI has to completely operate within the framework of the law, just like any other law enforcement agency.

there are cases where the rules are determined by the way the situation is subjectively perceived by the person involved.

their actions can later be deemed to be lawful or not depending on whether their perception is justified.

for example - the use of lethal force has to be justifiable (this applies to everyone not just the FBI obviously), one's justification after the fact can be considered valid or not depending on circumstances.

> In some countries just conspiring to commit a terrorist act can lead to a conviction

One of those countries would be the US: conspiring to commit any federal crime is, itself, a federal crime [0], and the US federal terrorism statute (which only applies to acts outside of the United States, though acts of terrorism within the United States are covered by other criminal statutes) also especially criminalizes attempts and conspiracies. [1]

[0] 18 USC Sec. 371; https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/371

[1] 18 USC Sec. 2332(b); https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2332

I don't think any of the bashing the FBI gets is about suggesting they are breaking the law. Rather, the suggestions are that the law is limitlessly broad and allows nearly anything so it is nearly impossible for them to break the law in the first place (they can, for example, set up entire laboratories dedicated to fabricating evidence and send trained experts who lie on the stand as standard operating procedure with no repercussions).

And given that their powers are so broad and immense, we rely on them acting in good faith and morally (we must, because we have nothing else), so we criticize them when they do not do that.

Preying on mentally ill Muslims and concocting elaborate schemes which exploit their inability to function normally to trick them into "taking part" in (sometimes little more than just 'agreeing to') some sort of plot that doesn't exist and then patting themselves on the back for "getting a terrorist" and locking the mentally ill person in jail for decades is, well, sick, and not a shining example of 'acting morally', so the criticism is well-deserved.

That specific case - yes it was a stretch, although this brings a question of a mental health -related detention which is a huge can of worms in and of itself. Also there are no specific details on the mental disease he was allegedly struggling with. Dissolving ppl in acid and burning women refusing to have sex with you is a 'mental disease' in my book which is what isis is doing. Should they be exempt from prosecution?

That said : "Of 508 defendants prosecuted in federal terrorism-related cases in the decade after 9/11, 243 were involved with an FBI informant, while 158 were the targets of sting operations. Of those cases, an informant or FBI undercover operative led 49 defendants in their terrorism plots, similar to the way Osmakac was led in his." So now 49 cases out of 508 were 'led' by the FBI, not clear how many of those had to do with mentally unfit individuals or if Osmakac was the only one.

> You can certainly coerce someone into that by threatening their life or their family, but that's not entrapment.

All coercion by law enforcement to commit a crime is entrapment, and entrapment includes a number of things that are not, strictly, coercion.

The term I was searching for is duress. I think duress (involving a lack of consent) is distinct from entrapment. Duress requires an immediate and inescapable threat of serious bodily harm, worse than the harm caused by the crime.

While I agree duress by law enforcement may be a form of entrapment, they are distinct legal defenses with different burdens of proof.

Five steps is too many for law enforcement to be involved.

How many steps does it take to become a mass murderer, which has magnitudes greater probability of happening to any one of us? Two: wanting to do it and buying a gun and bullets. That's it. Oh, maybe three: go to the mall. The FBI is not looking at every gun purchase that could result in a mass murder, nor are they supplying guns to people who (may think they) want to murder a bunch of people.

I think it's a very low ROI approach for the FBI and mostly they are wasting their time providing the means for "nobody-wannabe-terrorists" to become actual terrorists

Given that it only takes contacting the wrong person randomly some day for that wannabe terrorist to become an actual terrorist, I'm inclined to believe the FBI is providing a useful public service in rounding up these people. And not just that, the media attention here also gives the wannabe terrorist pause before reaching out for help to improve their craft ("what If I'm talking to an agent?").

Assuming the transcripts of the conversations with some of the people involved can be trusted (hey, it's the FBI), the so-called entrapped are given plenty of outs and chances to not-do that thing they're doing. There's no coercion happening.

> it only takes contacting the wrong person randomly some day for that wannabe terrorist to become an actual terrorist

I don't think that's true. It takes much more: Someone must be willing to give up their current life, career, friends and family; engage in very dangerous and socially taboo activities; train and acquire skills; kill; etc.

Most people don't have the motivation to leave a bad job or relationship. Retail sales isn't even as easy as you describe: Not every inquiry is a sale.

And so far, (again, assuming correct accounts), every person the FBI has "entrapped" this way has demonstrated that willingness. Up to and including pressing the button on a "bomb" the person believes will kill innocent people.

That seems like a different question (and I'm not sure they all went as far as pressing buttons, etc). I was responding to your statement:

> it only takes contacting the wrong person randomly some day for that wannabe terrorist to become an actual terrorist

People have been convinced to torture and kill others due to a stern look from someone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Gullible, uneducated people exist. We surround ourselves in bubbles of high education and it doesn't ever occur to us that people would go along with something like that, but they are out there.

That doesn't make it okay to exploit their ignorance.

> We surround ourselves in bubbles of high education and it doesn't ever occur to us that people would go along with something like that

I'd be surprised if it's tied to education. Highly educated people are are just as vulnerable, IMHO, and sometimes even more vulnerable due to their confidence in their own intellects. Many successful people I know are sure that every thought they sh-t out is made of gold. They are just vulnerable to different means of persuasion.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool. - Feynman

I would have to agree that formal education is by no means a guarantee of intelligence and critical thinking skills. The latter are unfortunately much more rare.

With those methods and enough time you can convince a lot of unstable people to commit a crime. Pretty much every group has some people that are unstable and can go over the top. I bet you could get some right wingers to blow up mosques or environmentalists to blow up power plants (just examples).

If you want to get potential criminals into jail then jails will soon be very crowded.

Something to consider: perhaps the Bureau allows resources to be spent on "nobody-wannabe-terrorists" because it provides real-world experience for dealing with "actual-fuck-up-your-shit" terrorists, as well as a general reminder of how powerful and pervasive the FBI can be.

There is a prevailing theory that America's post-WWII habit of blasting smaller countries to smithereens (Vietnam, Iraq) is at least partially done to test out new war tech, train soldiers for real conflicts, and demonstrate the power of the American military to uppity rivals who might think twice about butting heads with the biggest military of all time.

> (Vietnam, Iraq)

> demonstrate the power of the American military

Given that the first of those was a clear defeat and the second is still bogged down in guerilla warfare, I'm not sure this sends the desired message.

You missed the point. It's not about proving the ability to occupy a country, it's about proving the ability to annihilate its military, which is something to keep in mind whether you're China or Kyrgyzstan.

In Vietnam, we didn't annihilate any country's military (arguably, the Viet Cong was largely crushed, but they weren't a national military; the NVA, which was a national military, wasn't crushed.)

So, even with the newly stated point, citing Vietnam as evidence of our ability to annihilate a country's military isn't really a good idea.

So without these occurrences, you're positing that countries like China and Kyrgyzstan (seriously?) would some how lose track of the fact that we spend more on our military than the entire GDP of most other countries, have shiny military tech coming out our ears, and have enough nuclear capability to make irradiated glass the only commodity left for them to barter with in their new found post-apocalyptic hell scape?

Bullies gonna bully, though.

I think both situations you described are unethical and I don't want my government doing either of them.

I'd also question your use of the word prevailing, as I have never heard this theory in respectable historical circles. (I'm not an expert by any means, but I have yet to hear a respected scholar or non-conspiracy theorist advance any evidence to this concept.)

Ask Patty Hearst

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hearst

Reply on news.ycombinator.com