>- Guy posts online "Amazon data centers should be blown up"

More like, "I'm going to blow up amazon's data centers, who's with me?"

>- Undercover FBI contacts guy "you are totally right. You should do it. Here's a bomb."

According to the criminal complaint[1], the accused has done a lot of prep himself, including: scoping out the place and making maps, disguising his car, and making some sort of box for directing the explosive blasts.

[1] https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txnd.346637...

>- If guy is backing out, he gets coaxed into it further. There is often mental illness involved.

This did not happen at all.

Being the criminal complaint, all this stuff was written by the FBI. We'll see how it actually goes at trial. The grandparent isn't just making stuff up; the feds have done this before, continually https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-entrap...

At the same time, there are people who are actually motivated enough to do something like this.

Just last year someone detonated an RV bomb at a Nashville AT&T building.

Not saying it has never happened but it is illegal for the police to entice someone into committing a crime they otherwise wouldn't have committed.

This is called "entrapment" and if caught, law enforcement will face penalties for doing it, and the defendant can't be convicted for the crime.

I agree to an extent, but here's the article:

>Mr Pendley attended the Capitol Riots of 6 January, investigators found, having driven from Texas to Washington DC. Investigators said he told friends he had brought an assault rifle with him, but left it in his car...

>The posts from "Dionysus" that sparked concern spoke of his desire to "conduct a little experiment," which he said would be dangerous and "draw a lot of heat" and could be "dangerous". Asked by another user what the result would be, he responded, "death", according to the court documents.

>The FBI managed to uncover Dionysus's email address, and link that to his Facebook account and real-world identity.

>In late January, Mr Pendley began using the encrypted messaging app Signal to detail his plans to bomb an AWS facility - but the recipient of those messages was a confidential FBI informant, investigators said.

>Over the course of February, Mr Pendley shared his plans, including the type of explosive he sought, potential targets, and maps.

Of course we are getting this report from the FBI files, but it doesn't really sound like this particular person was being drawn into a web, or that they could reasonably just ignore him as a crank. Bombings like these do get carried out after all, in Nashville for instance.

> Why not just charge him for making a threat to begin with?

Most likely because what he said isn't actually criminal, or it would be difficult to convict. In the US generally threats have to be specific and reasonable (I'm assuming the relevant crime would be making terroristic threats). A reasonable person needs to conclude that the statement they made was a threat, and that the threat is credible. The actual post he made (from the article):

The posts from "Dionysus" that sparked concern spoke of his desire to "conduct a little experiment," which he said would be dangerous and "draw a lot of heat" and could be "dangerous". Asked by another user what the result would be, he responded, "death", according to the court documents.

I'm not an expert, but that doesn't strike me as being specific or reasonable. Especially when you consider he was saying this on a militia website, and not saying it to Amazon or an Amazon employee.

I read the article, you're adding in a lot of details to make the suspect seem like he was duped. We don't know if he tried to back out or if they coaxed him.

Idk if this guy is mentally ill or not, but he met up with someone who claimed to be selling c4, learned how to detonate and gave him money for them. Idk how much it cost, but I don't know why he would buy them if he wasn't expecting to use them.

He's assuming the guy got duped because that's their MO.

Feds have cried terrorist in questionable circumstances way to many times. Now when they say it everyone assumes it's some extremist who they goaded into action.

I know what you're saying — feels like entrapment. But then I remember there is no way in hell I would meet a guy delivering me C4.

Assuming delivering C4 was the stated purpose of meeting. It's certainly possible, but...

C4 is an odd explosive to use, you can can probably buy others on the internet.

The particular FBI agents involved have probably learned how to best approach this, so reality is probably different than what you imagine.

> Why not just charge him for making a threat to begin with?

Without concrete followup it is pretty easy for someone charged with something like that to claim they were just joking or were generally unserious about it.

There's a critical thing you're missing: the responder wasn't an FBI agent, it was a civilian. They then reported it to the FBI.

Law agencies love to use entrapment. It gets you that promotion and bragging rights that you foiled that "terrorist plot"

How’s that any different from standing on the corner saying I want illegal drugs. Someone complains to the cops. A cop finally comes along and says ok here’s an illegal drug and they are arrested.

Except he shouted onto the internet and someone finally said ok I’ve got some bomb. Download signal and contact my bomb dealer.

What if someone else who wasn’t the FBI got to him first, and provided the bomb and the motivation? Then we’d have a tragedy.

Better that the FBI reach people like this early before a bad guy does.

Should the FBI be actively grooming all susceptible people for terrorism? This does not bode well for the the mentally ill, intellectually disabled, and children.

Agreed - Not a fan of entrapment schemes.

They're conceptually related to reporting exploits in public. We report exploits in public because we operate under the assumption that if the "good guys" have figured out an attack vector, the "bad guys" have too.

We honeypot criminals-in-the-making under the assumption that if the "good guys" can get the person to prepare for violence resulting in death, the "bad guys" can too. Whether the honeypot is too sweet or unreasonably sticky is an excellent matter for discussion in a court of law (but it's probably worth noting, as a pulse check, that more than 99.9% of the population isn't even in the market for C-4 of any kind, let alone for terroristic ends).

Hacking a computer system is wholly different from convincing someone to carry out an attack. You are prescribing trying to goad the mentally ill into violence instead of providing them medical treatment. On a smaller scale, try subjecting your friends or personal relations to loyalty/character tests and see where that ends up.

To make it more clear: trying to hack a computer system does not change that system. Trying to convince a person to carry out an attack (via social pressure, provision of materiel, planning, etc.) definitely changes that person.

I mean really, the more I think about this the more ridiculous it gets. Imagine coming up with an online persona to try to seduce your significant other with all your personal knowledge about them, as a form of penetration testing. We rightly view people who do this as being very controlling & insecure - not normal or justifiable behavior at all, and it materially changes your relationship with them regardless of how it turns out!

It of course matters how far they went in interacting with him, but if all it takes for someone to try to bomb a building is another person online going, "do it, I'll sell you a bomb", they should probably not be free and are clearly a danger. If this is mainly due to mental illness, that can and should be considered during the trial as far as punishment/rehabilitation goes, but has no bearing on the fact that they were willing to bomb a building.

This is a very unrealistic idea of how these cases usually play out. I linked this article elsewhere in the thread: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/peteraldhous/fbi-entrap...

I'm afraid I don't see the relationship between the notion of catfishing one's significant other and setting up a honeypot for somebody seeking weapons to harm other people. The arrested individual wasn't married to the FBI agent, and I don't think anybody reasonable maintains a similar trust relationship with either strangers or government agents to the one that they maintain with their significant others. Can you clarify your meaning?

The people generally aren't seeking weapons to harm other people, or at most have very angry thoughts about some target. The feds do their research. They gain their trust. They play on their fears & desires. They suggest the crime.

It appears juries have concluded that people that suggestible cannot be trusted in open society (based on the Buzzfeed article you linked to).

No, the juries decided whether the people violated the laws as written. Their decisions have no bearing on the validity of those laws as such.

Maybe because of the punitive philosophy of the American justice system, combined with a sense of economical expedience.

Scenario A: Intervene on the basis of an online threat. If he gets punished at all, it will probably be very light. Not punitive enough.

Scenario B: Monitor the situation until he starts independently taking concrete action, then intervene. Solid case for full sentence.

Scenario C: Speed Scenario B along with a "helping hand".

>Intervene on the basis of an online threat. If he gets punished at all, it will probably be very light. Not punitive enough.

This has nothing to do with it not being "punitive enough". If every online threat of this caliber was to be investigated and every person making those threats would get a "light" punishment, then we run into two issues.

First, there simply won't be enough resources. If you look at twitter for the majority of last year, you will find straight up tons of people who made "threats" of a similar magnitude. It would be a giant waste of resources too, given that most of those people are just venting with no actionable plans or ways to make those "threats" materialize. Not even mentioning that we might not want to stick that many random people who just talked vague "threats" online with criminal charges.

Second, those who actually were going to follow through on those threats wouldn't be deterred by "light" punishment that a vague online "threat" like that would carry with it. They would just bs the officer and assure them that everything was good, and the officer would go on their merry way. After all, if there is no proof that the suspect actually has a way of making that threat materialize or has a proven serious intent, there is not much the officer can do at this point. With that approach, you essentially tip off the suspect that they are being watched and suspected, so it would just alert them to be sneakier about materializing their plan.

> you will find straight up tons of people who made "threats" of a similar magnitude

Not tons of people who actually attempted to purchase a bomb, however.

Exactly. At the point of where someone is actually attempting to purchase a bomb from an undercover agent is when the intervention should take place. And when I say "attempting", I mean successfully going through with a "purchase" of a fake bomb.

Mental illness isn't an excuse for socially damaging behavior. People who can be coaxed so easily into attempted murder of so many people are a threat to society and should be arrested.