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Nearly two years before the U.S. government's first known inquiry into the activities of Reddit co-founder and famed digital activist Aaron Swartz, the FBI swept up his email data in a counterterrorism investigation that also ensnared students at an American university, according to a once-secret document first published by Gizmodo.
The email data belonging to Swartz, who was likely not the target of the counterterrorism investigation, was cataloged by the FBI and accessed more than a year later as it weighed potential charges against him for something wholly unrelated. The legal practice of storing data on Americans who are not suspected of crimes, so that it may be used against them later on, has long been denounced by civil liberties experts, who've called on courts and lawmakers to curtail the FBI's "radically" expansive search procedures.
The government does store information indefinitely that can be used against you later at a more convenient time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @03:59AM (8 children)
So we want them throwing kids in the slammer for making some edgy comments online?
The school shooter joke is a product of the times. Probably tens of thousands of kids in the U.S. fit the profile, with some of them being jokingly called (bullied as) potential school shooters.
The FBI doesn't have the resources to follow up on all of these leads, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to intervene much. Maybe give the kid a pamphlet saying "Hey, don't be the next Klebold." Or throw the book at them, put them in juvie or prison, setting them up on a path that will ruin their life anyway, turning them into lifelong criminals.
We'd probably have to repeal the 2nd to maybe slow down the rate of mass murders, but doing so would trigger some kind of a civil war, or at least cause a wave of attacks with Americans violating the law and distributing guns en masse, using the latest fun technologies like 3D metal printing. If we want to address school shootings, we should be doing it by figuring out stuff like how to keep people alive for longer after they've been shot in the head. Because mass murder is status quo and won't be going away anytime soon.
Incompetent or not, predicting the future is difficult, and we don't want to give the FBI more power to ruin people's lives. So they will continue to do what is easy: manufacture terrorists and "catch" them.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:01AM (2 children)
Yet they seem to have the resources to take someone without the wherewithal to actually do anything and groom him into a homegrown terrorist just so they can take him down.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @12:54PM (1 child)
Predicting that someone with "risk factors" will commit a major crime: not impossible, but improbable.
Enticing someone with "risk factors" to accept delivery of guns, explosives, or whatever from an undercover officer or confidential informant: much easier. If it requires the FBI to further radicalize the person, so be it. If they get suspicious or it doesn't work, you just move on to the next person on the list until you get a hit.
Predicting the future is a fool's errand. Making the future is where it's at.
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(Score: 2) by sjames on Saturday December 15 2018, @06:50PM
It looks good on their statistics, but it is contrary to anything they are supposed to be doing. It pits them in the same class as the crooked mechanics along the highway that put holes in people's tires then overcharge to fix them.
Of course, they're much worse than those "50 percenters" because they destroy lives rather than just take some petty cash.
Meanwhile, the family of the kid that shot up the school in Fla. begged for any sort of mental health services they could get for the kid and they got nothing. That's a lot of kids dead because the feds were too busy subsidizing roadside hucksters to actually do something that might make a difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 15 2018, @07:20PM (2 children)
Mass murder is not the status quo. It's a statistical abberation that's hyped up by the media to get eyeballs.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Saturday December 15 2018, @07:25PM
These incidents are rare, but they are becoming more frequent. The media may even be to blame for causing that.
But yes, if we switched to driverless cars, started opening up supervised injection sites, or cured cancer, a lot more avoidable deaths would be prevented than if we somehow eliminated all mass murders.
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(Score: 2) by bob_super on Monday December 17 2018, @07:38AM
Mass shooting happen most days.
Mass murders do not.
We're just lucky most assholes are terrible marksmen.
(Score: 2) by epitaxial on Monday December 17 2018, @02:48AM (1 child)
These were more than edgy comments. This kid was not allowed to have a backpack on school property because of his previous behavior. One teacher even said to alert him if the kid showed up with one. The school knew he was a threat.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday December 17 2018, @03:24AM
I was talking generally. But as for that specific kid, clearly he wasn't expelled or imprisoned. Was there enough info for the FBI to surveil the kid or search his home for mass murder plans in diaries?
It's easy to say in retrospect that the kid was going to shoot up a school. But we don't have the Stasi required to catch them all. And I'm OK with that.
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