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Comment by gruez | Hacker News Reader

> You can have an agenda, create fear to further your goals and say you didn't have an agenda - pretend the results were accidental.

But that's not what's happening? It's not like we have IRA setting off bombs and then saying "it's us but it's accidental wink wink". Terrorists are interested in creating fear, hence why they take attributions in the first place.

>It can't be that easy - if some government is going to charge you, they'll do it based on what you achieved, not what you say.

You do realize something can be a crime and still not be terrorism, right?

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> Terrorists are interested in creating fear, hence why they take attributions in the first place.

That's one possible way, but not always needed. The message for fear may be "us gas infrastructure can be broken for days by internet exploits" - that's been done. Adding "by Russian groups" at the end does change the message and creates a lot of issues as we've seen - so the preference may be to deny it.

You do realize criminals don't get to pick which crimes they're charged with, right?

There's something called "motive" that highly influences the course and outcome of a legal case.

Could they still end up treated like terrorists? Totally. Some drug lords are still called terrorists even though their only goal is monopoly control of the cocaine market by any means necessary.

But their loudly and public disclaiming all intent to harm puts them a huge step away from being terrorists in the public’s eyes. Even if the government designates them so, they still have to make a case as to why money should be spent in going after them instead of criminals the population actually cares about.

>Some drug lords are still called terrorists even though their only goal is monopoly control of the cocaine market by any means necessary.

1. who's calling them terrorists? Some shmuck off the street? Some writer for a tabloid? People on wallstreetbets think that hedge funds are "financial terrorists", doesn't mean they are.

2. drug lords can absolutely engage in actual terrorist activities, eg. "we will attack innocent civilians unless you stop arresting us".

You know. I looked it up, and it seems that there was a plan by Trump to list the Mexican cartels as terrorist orgs, but it never went through. Now Biden is being asked to do the same.

So seems my example was wrong. Whoops.

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