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 AustonT wrote:
You're right we should expand this program to other areas. Lets go to highschools, talk some teenagers into stealing a car, drive them to the car, hand them a jimmy and when they get the door open arrest them. Or we could have the police grow its own pot, find some dude, convince him to sell it and override his objections, and then arrest him when he makes a sale. You guys are totally on to a new way to approach policing. Make crime happen! To prevent crime.

Sure. If you are stupid enough to commit a crime because someone asks you to, you probably deserve it.

Again, if someone walks up to me and says 'Hey let's go steal a car!', I'm gonna laugh my ass off at them.

Strawman all you want, but it isn't the same.

 pretre wrote:
The problem is that no matter how much money you offer an informant, he wouldn't convince someone to bomb something if they didn't intend to do it in the first place.

If some guy comes to me with a great idea to bomb the NY Fed, I'm gonna smile, nod and as soon as he leaves the room call the FBI.

Except there's one tiny little flaw in this reasoning: wanting to blow up something isn't a crime. Without the FBI helping and encouraging them at every step of the process would they have gone all the way to turning ideas into reality, or would they have just been another angry person ranting on the godhatesamerica.com forums about how cool it would be to blow up the government?

Jack Bauer must be a Raven Guard player

 Peregrine wrote:
Except there's one tiny little flaw in this reasoning: wanting to blow up something isn't a crime. Without the FBI helping and encouraging them at every step of the process would they have gone all the way to turning ideas into reality, or would they have just been another angry person ranting on the godhatesamerica.com forums about how cool it would be to blow up the government?

Doesn't matter what would have happened. It matters what did. When provided the opportunity, they tried to blow something up. Whether they stumbled over a stack of dynamite in the street or the FBI gave it to them, they would have done it.

If they had stayed at the 'just wanting to' step, there wouldn't be a problem.

They kinda do that, but what they do is this.


The police leave an unlocked(or sometimes locked) car in an area with high car theft. The car is equipped with a system that shuts the engine off and locks the perp inside.

They then wait till someone comes along and steals the car, then they activate the lock system and arrest the thief.

The person committed a crime, the police simply provided an opprotunity to commit it. Which is not the same as forcing them to. The person could easily have just kept on walking.



With drugs, an undercover cop will approach a seller and attempt to make a buy. Once the deal is done, they have the evidence that the person is a seller of illegal drugs, and can then arrest them.

They do the same with underage alcohol sales. The police will hire underage people to ask a salesperson to sell them alcohol. If the person sells it to them, then they arrest the cashier/charge the business.

Or they will have underage people ask customers at a liquor store to buy them alcohol. If they do, they then arrest the person that made the purchase for the underage individual.

its setting a trap, but the person doesn't get forced to commit the crime. If they don't do the crime, they walk away none the wiser. In their mind, some punk kid just asked for some Alcohol and they refused like the law abiding citizen they are.

 pretre wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
You're right we should expand this program to other areas. Lets go to highschools, talk some teenagers into stealing a car, drive them to the car, hand them a jimmy and when they get the door open arrest them. Or we could have the police grow its own pot, find some dude, convince him to sell it and override his objections, and then arrest him when he makes a sale. You guys are totally on to a new way to approach policing. Make crime happen! To prevent crime.

Sure. If you are stupid enough to commit a crime because someone asks you to, you probably deserve it.

Again, if someone walks up to me and says 'Hey let's go steal a car!', I'm gonna laugh my ass off at them.

Strawman all you want, but it isn't the same.

yeah, that's not a straw man, its a conceptual metaphor matching original facts and addressing the original issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They kinda do that, but what they do is this.


The police leave an unlocked(or sometimes locked) car in an area with high car theft. The car is equipped with a system that shuts the engine off and locks the perp inside.

They then wait till someone comes along and steals the car, then they activate the lock system and arrest the thief.

The person committed a crime, the police simply provided an opprotunity to commit it. Which is not the same as forcing them to. The person could easily have just kept on walking.



With drugs, an undercover cop will approach a seller and attempt to make a buy. Once the deal is done, they have the evidence that the person is a seller of illegal drugs, and can then arrest them.

They do the same with underage alcohol sales. The police will hire underage people to ask a salesperson to sell them alcohol. If the person sells it to them, then they arrest the cashier/charge the business.

Or they will have underage people ask customers at a liquor store to buy them alcohol. If they do, they then arrest the person that made the purchase for the underage individual.

its setting a trap, but the person doesn't get forced to commit the crime. If they don't do the crime, they walk away none the wiser. In their mind, some punk kid just asked for some Alcohol and they refused like the law abiding citizen they are.

The difference here being that the cops don't just set up the bait car, they go out and find the "car thief" drag him to the car, train him how to steal it, give him the tools, pressure him not to quit, and then make the arrest. There's a fundamental difference between baiting a trap, and going out to the pet store buying a mouse and throwing it at the trap until it snaps.

 AustonT wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
You're right we should expand this program to other areas. Lets go to highschools, talk some teenagers into stealing a car, drive them to the car, hand them a jimmy and when they get the door open arrest them. Or we could have the police grow its own pot, find some dude, convince him to sell it and override his objections, and then arrest him when he makes a sale. You guys are totally on to a new way to approach policing. Make crime happen! To prevent crime.

Sure. If you are stupid enough to commit a crime because someone asks you to, you probably deserve it.

Again, if someone walks up to me and says 'Hey let's go steal a car!', I'm gonna laugh my ass off at them.

Strawman all you want, but it isn't the same.

yeah, that's not a straw man, its a conceptual metaphor matching original facts and addressing the original issue.

Suuurrreeee.... I think Grey Templar addressed how this works outside of terrorism though.

 pretre wrote:

 AustonT wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
You're right we should expand this program to other areas. Lets go to highschools, talk some teenagers into stealing a car, drive them to the car, hand them a jimmy and when they get the door open arrest them. Or we could have the police grow its own pot, find some dude, convince him to sell it and override his objections, and then arrest him when he makes a sale. You guys are totally on to a new way to approach policing. Make crime happen! To prevent crime.

Sure. If you are stupid enough to commit a crime because someone asks you to, you probably deserve it.

Again, if someone walks up to me and says 'Hey let's go steal a car!', I'm gonna laugh my ass off at them.

Strawman all you want, but it isn't the same.

yeah, that's not a straw man, its a conceptual metaphor matching original facts and addressing the original issue.

Suuurrreeee.... I think Grey Templar addressed how this works outside of terrorism though.

If you don't understand a logical fallacy you shouldn't try to invoke it.

 AustonT wrote:


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They kinda do that, but what they do is this.


The police leave an unlocked(or sometimes locked) car in an area with high car theft. The car is equipped with a system that shuts the engine off and locks the perp inside.

They then wait till someone comes along and steals the car, then they activate the lock system and arrest the thief.

The person committed a crime, the police simply provided an opprotunity to commit it. Which is not the same as forcing them to. The person could easily have just kept on walking.



With drugs, an undercover cop will approach a seller and attempt to make a buy. Once the deal is done, they have the evidence that the person is a seller of illegal drugs, and can then arrest them.

They do the same with underage alcohol sales. The police will hire underage people to ask a salesperson to sell them alcohol. If the person sells it to them, then they arrest the cashier/charge the business.

Or they will have underage people ask customers at a liquor store to buy them alcohol. If they do, they then arrest the person that made the purchase for the underage individual.

its setting a trap, but the person doesn't get forced to commit the crime. If they don't do the crime, they walk away none the wiser. In their mind, some punk kid just asked for some Alcohol and they refused like the law abiding citizen they are.

The difference here being that the cops don't just set up the bait car, they go out and find the "car thief" drag him to the car, train him how to steal it, give him the tools, pressure him not to quit, and then make the arrest. There's a fundamental difference between baiting a trap, and going out to the pet store buying a mouse and throwing it at the trap until it snaps.

They do?

Evidence please.

 pretre wrote:
Doesn't matter what would have happened. It matters what did. When provided the opportunity, they tried to blow something up. Whether they stumbled over a stack of dynamite in the street or the FBI gave it to them, they would have done it.

But only with the FBI helping them and encouraging them to keep going. There's a reason entrapment exists as a legal concept, you know.

If they had stayed at the 'just wanting to' step, there wouldn't be a problem.

And maybe they would have without the FBI pushing them to go beyond that step so they could have a terrorist plot to "defeat". They didn't just randomly hand the guy a bomb and say "hey, want to kill some people?", it was a gradual process of encouraging that desire and always pushing to move on to the next step. With the FBI getting involved to that degree it's no longer a question of finding someone who's guilty, it's just about finding someone who is easily persuaded.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They do?

Evidence please.

I think you misread, what he's saying is that in this case the FBI did the equivalent of that, which isn't how bait cars are normally used.

 AustonT wrote:
If you don't understand a logical fallacy you shouldn't try to invoke it.

No I get it. You are creating a superficially similar, yet different, scenario and attacking it instead of our point.

Hmmm, I see the point now.

But given that Terrorist organizations do the same thing it seems prudent to intercept the potential perps of the crime before the actual terrorists find them.

That way they person, who is fully intending to do it, never gets the chance to commit the crime.

 Peregrine wrote:

 pretre wrote:
Doesn't matter what would have happened. It matters what did. When provided the opportunity, they tried to blow something up. Whether they stumbled over a stack of dynamite in the street or the FBI gave it to them, they would have done it.

But only with the FBI helping them and encouraging them to keep going. There's a reason entrapment exists as a legal concept, you know.

Yes, entrapment certainly exists as a legal concept...however so does the idea of a "sting operation".

And entrapment does not apply when it is done through an informant, as is the case here.

If they had stayed at the 'just wanting to' step, there wouldn't be a problem.

And maybe they would have without the FBI pushing them to go beyond that step so they could have a terrorist plot to "defeat". They didn't just randomly hand the guy a bomb and say "hey, want to kill some people?", it was a gradual process of encouraging that desire and always pushing to move on to the next step. With the FBI getting involved to that degree it's no longer a question of finding someone who's guilty, it's just about finding someone who is easily persuaded.

As noted above, it's not entrapment when someone approaches an informant or vice versa.

 Grey Templar wrote:
They do?

Evidence please.

I think you misread, what he's saying is that in this case the FBI did the equivalent of that, which isn't how bait cars are normally used.

And I think you misread the article, because that is not what happened here.

Grey Templar wrote:
They do?

Evidence please.

I thought what I was saying was pretty obvious.

Peregrine wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
They do?

Evidence please.

I think you misread, what he's saying is that in this case the FBI did the equivalent of that, which isn't how bait cars are normally used.

OK so it was.

 Kanluwen wrote:
Yes, entrapment certainly exists as a legal concept...however so does the idea of a "sting operation".

A sting operation would be putting up www.cheapbombs.com and waiting for someone to attempt to buy a bomb, then arresting them for buying illegal explosives. But of course that's not dramatic enough, we need to manufacture an entire terrorist plot so we can brag about it, complete with horrifying descriptions of specific targets and how many people would have been killed.

And entrapment does not apply when it is done through an informant, as is the case here.

Which is a technicality. Whether or not there's a legal loophole to allow it, it's still wrong if you take an extended period of time to convince someone to participate in a criminal plot that you created.

As noted above, it's not entrapment when someone approaches an informant or vice versa.

And why not? How does the presence or absence of an informant change anything?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Hmmm, I see the point now.

But given that Terrorist organizations do the same thing it seems prudent to intercept the potential perps of the crime before the actual terrorists find them.

That way they person, who is fully intending to do it, never gets the chance to commit the crime.

Except the FBI went way beyond intercepting a plot, they found a potential participant and pushed them into participating in the FBI's plot. Without the FBI helping and encouraging the "plot" would probably have gone no farther than angry feelings, just like the guy saying "I'm going to kill my boss" probably isn't actually on his way to do it with a loaded gun in his pocket.

Its still one less candidate for a real terror organization to recruit, and thats cool in my book.

If the only terrorism plots we manage to prevent are the ones that we are involved in, then maybe there is not that much of a thread out there?

The problem is... How will you know? Stop trying to stop terrorism and hope that it doesn't happen?

So stopping terrorists that function under sponsorship of our government is vital to reminding us that people are trying to terrorize us?

Not that terrorists who function without U.S. Federal aid are much better a lot of the time... remember the "attack" in NYC a couple years back? The guy who made a massive VBIED out of fertilizer that wouldn't explode.... and locked the keys to his safe house in the car bomb?

 AustonT wrote:
[There's a fundamental difference between baiting a trap, and going out to the pet store buying a mouse and throwing it at the trap until it snaps.

That's a great turn of phrase.

That being said, although I think these things are kinda dumb and am very dubious about their effectiveness; I'm not sure the FBI should stop doing it either. Which I know sounds super hypocritical. But I think there is something to the deterrence argument as well. While I'm sure would-be terrorists probably know blowing stuff up is unlawful, I wonder how many plots might have been foiled by actual terror dudes who became shy of their contacts possibly being G-men. But it's probably a bad idea to run dubious law enforcement strategies based upon unknowable hypothetical numbers.

So, I guess what I'm saying is while I think this is kinda a dumb idea, I don't really have a better one either.

VBIED = Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device

Car bomb

Visual clue on what it can do

I still can't get over that Jihadin...

Truly scary...

 Grey Templar wrote:
the idea is that if we give a fake outlet for these terrorists, we can prevent them from getting away with it. We redirect their efforts into a trap that cannot lead to them carrying out their act. And then we can lock them up.


It will also make terrorist candidates much more paranoid. They're contacting a representitive of a terrorist organization who is going to set him up with explosives and intelligence.

However, the contact may actually be an FBI agent. So it makes the person wary of contacting a terrorist organization rep in the first place.

The person doesn't want to get trapped and caught, so he eventually avoids contacting anyone.

Yeah, definitely this. Every time someone gets busted in a trap like this, all the nutters out there will be a little more paranoid about the person they're contacting. Which increases the chance that a guy with knowledge and means won't make final contact with a guy with the desire to kill some innocent people.

 AustonT wrote:
I get tired of hearing the FBI trumpet how awesome they are at catching terrorists that they cultivate.
Hey guys we tricked another guy into a fake terror plot we concocted and now the Alerican people think we actually do something! High fives all around!

Entrapment requires thye urging and providing means to commit a crime. Merely selling an item does not constitute entrapment. If the FBI said, "Here's this stuff go blow up a building," there wouldn't be a case.

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
Not that terrorists who function without U.S. Federal aid are much better a lot of the time... remember the "attack" in NYC a couple years back? The guy who made a massive VBIED out of fertilizer that wouldn't explode.... and locked the keys to his safe house in the car bomb?

This one's an interesting example, as this this attempted terrorist attack happened because of America's attempts to stop terrorism:

Wikipedia wrote:When asked by the judge at his trial as to how he could justify planting a bomb near innocent women and children, Shahzad responded by saying that US drone strikes "don't see children, they don't see anybody. They kill women, children, they kill everybody."

So our two biggest categories of terrorists attacks that we caught are:

1) Terrorists attacks that happened, but failed due to people screwing them up.
2) Terrorist attacks that happened with materials and supplies given to the bad guys by our government.

 Surtur wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
I get tired of hearing the FBI trumpet how awesome they are at catching terrorists that they cultivate.
Hey guys we tricked another guy into a fake terror plot we concocted and now the Alerican people think we actually do something! High fives all around!

Entrapment requires thye urging and providing means to commit a crime. Merely selling an item does not constitute entrapment. If the FBI said, "Here's this stuff go blow up a building," there wouldn't be a case.

Just in case you missed the entire thread. I never said a word about entrapment. Petre did though, you can take up entrapment with him. In fact that's literally the first time I've used the word entrapment on Dakka. Because I don't give two gaks about the legality of the FBI job security program.

 sebster wrote:
Yeah, definitely this. Every time someone gets busted in a trap like this, all the nutters out there will be a little more paranoid about the person they're contacting. Which increases the chance that a guy with knowledge and means won't make final contact with a guy with the desire to kill some innocent people.

But is it worth the cost?

First of all you're throwing someone in prison for life to make this example. The guy might be a , but being a and dreaming about killing people isn't a crime. Now, thanks to the FBI's help, he'll probably spend the rest of his life in prison.

Second, consider the costs to society. Stuff like this supports the "LIVE IN FEAR AND GIVE YOUR GOVERNMENT MORE POWER" attitude and allows continued abuses of power in the name of "security". And I suspect the government knows this, which is why they let the plot continue to the point of making the "attack" and released dramatic details about how horrible it would have been if it was a real bomb. They could have just quietly arrested him for possession of illegal explosives, but that just wouldn't make as good of a show.

 Surtur wrote:
Entrapment requires thye urging and providing means to commit a crime. Merely selling an item does not constitute entrapment. If the FBI said, "Here's this stuff go blow up a building," there wouldn't be a case.

Except we've seen with these cases that the FBI does more than just provide a fake bomb when the "terrorist" asks for it, they actively aid in planning and encourage the "terrorist" to move forward with the plot. Essentially they're manufacturing a "crime" which only exists because the FBI created it.

 Peregrine wrote:
The guy might be a , but being a and dreaming about killing people isn't a crime.

That is true, but they aren't arrested for dreaming about it. They are only arrested after they have tried to actually follow through on it. Whether or not they were unduly coerced into doing something they may not have done without FBI involvement is certainly an interesting topic and worth discussing, but they aren't arrested for dreaming; in the end they still tried to kill people before being arrested.