Honest question: is this the type of material that should be leaked? Is there an overriding good to revealing this document to the public?
I lean towards no, but I'd be interested in discussion on this.
I lean towards no, but I'd be interested in discussion on this.
I don't consider it offensive to talk about these issues openly because I am secure in my knowledge that Islam does not encourage terrorism. I'm more offended when people sweep it under the rug. When it's about safety, people have to leave their fears and biases at the door and accept the truth.
A typical person in some parts of America today will look at a practicing Muslim and automatically see a terrorist, but that's neither helpful nor accurate. The facts don't support that stereotype, and I think the FBI understands that. Of course ideology plays a role in detecting threats, but there are other factors that may play a bigger role, like mental health, social stability, criminal history, training in weapons, etc. If everyone understood this, it would lead to more accurate tips by the public to law enforcement, and the concept of a "Muslim ban" wouldn't be seen as productive. But the centuries-old narrative of Muslim hordes attacking the West has been revived, and that is how people see the issue, and that's unfortunate.
There is not a universal flavor of Islam that is accepted by all Muslims. Islam is a decentralized religion with hundreds of factions that all have different interpretations of the Koran and its teachings.
The hadith science is the original "extreme vetting."
Sounds like we need some sort of way to vet people coming into the country?
https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2015/11/20/infogra...
note: multiple stages of bio checking, numerous three-letter agencies, additional steps for Syrians.
I used to post this every other day on fb, but lately I just realize there are simply groups who repeatedly gaslight each other and aren't interested in reality. One of them referred to my post as "liberal facts," implying, apparently, that the government doesn't perform the above screening process which it claims it does. shrug.jpg
It therefore seems reasonable to me you might want to restrict travel from countries that either have such weak governments that fake 'official' documents can be obtained (somalia, syria, yemen etc) or countries that have a stated policy of non-cooperation with the US government on such matters (Iran).
That would also explain why you would not exclude people from 46 other muslim majority countries - there would be no reason to if their official documents can be relied on, and they are responsive to queries from the US when some information needs to be verified.
Unless the government has every present and future terrorist's fingerprints in a database, how will scanning fingerprints be effective? It cannot be, it logically does not make sense. This logic is confirmed by FBI director Comey who told congress the same thing.
Perhaps that is where your disagreements with the "far-right" are stemming from?
Of course, it would be silly to (for example) bar someone from immigrating solely because they played laser tag, but I'd assume they would aggregate multiple factors into a total score and measure it against some threshold.
Vetting has long been a part of the US travel visa system.
the "get them back" mentality of the west's constituents is incompatible with "attack anybody occupying muslim lands" mentality
First, while much of the information might be common-sense, it might not be to potential adversaries and I see no reason to provide further aide.
Second, revealing documents like this helps prove what FBI isn't doing. When trying to plan an effective counter to surveillance, it can be just as important to know what isn't be tracked as well as what is. Again, I don't see a public good here.
I simply don't think there is an overriding good that outweighs potential downsides (even if small). Revealing this document does not show moral or legal problems. All it does is fulfill curiosity. Which isn't a good reason for leaking information related to national security.
Does it?
What the hell?
You'd be surprised, or perhaps disturbed, by how many kids put "is a Muslim" on their list...
They have it on posters in transit hubs, stadiums, airports, all over the place.
Americans live in this constant state of paranoia about things like this.
Many would-be terrorists seem to only take casual precautions to avoid getting caught. Maybe, like so many criminals, they think they're better than others who have been caught.
It's come out again and again that a lot of these attacks have been planned with nothing more than email, Facebook and unencrypted text messages. There's just too much information out there to sift through and find all the true positives.
If they actually cared about operational security they'd read up on how spies do it. That stuff is pretty much public knowledge if you spend time researching.
"48 ways the CIA uses to determine when to drone strike someone".
Wouldn't you like to know if the CIA actually uses common sense methods to determine when to assassinate someone? By the same token, we should know when the government decides to put people on no-fly lists, and all sorts of other lists.
And before you say that the CIA is an intelligence agency and therefore everything it does must be kept secret, the thing is drone strikes should not be done by the CIA. If you wage war, then it should be done in the open, lest you want a repeat of the Vietnam war (which arguably is already the case with the mostly failed, yet continuing operations in the Middle East]).
Obama actually wanted to give drone strikes to the Pentagon, but of course, Obama as a weakly-minded politician that he was that always compromised to the other side's benefit, eventually backed down and allowed the CIA to handle drone strikes.
If you don't see doing drone strikes (of which thousands were kept completely secret) against 8 different nations by a secretive intelligence agency, then I don't know what else to tell you.
edit: I will acknowledge that the age of the document does change its impact. But 2013 is pretty recent.