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A comment on An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I Took a Picture of This. Parent comment

Re:An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I T... by jonah on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @12:46AM (#8034825)
I would agree that we don't know the details in this particular case. OTOH, I think we hear about similar cases often enough to safely assume that at least a fair number of them wouldn't need to be taken as far if a little bit of common sense was utilized. (But maybe it's just that we don't hear about the ones where it was.)
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Re:An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I T... by dm2 on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @01:17AM (#8034921)
There are crazy and evil people in the world who are determined to harm society and other innocent people, and part of the FBI's job is to help prevent this. The acceptable cost is debatable.

If the FBI investigates 500,000 people and prevents a single instance similar to the photo below, is it worth it?

http://11even.net/wp-content/uploads/World-Trade-Center-2002...

There have been plenty of attacks stopped http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorism_in_the_United_States

There is always the possibility of something even worse happening. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_terrorism

A notable incident from 2013: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fbi-foils-plot-build-strange-...

I'm sorry if this sounds like fear-mongering, these things do happen though.

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Re:An FBI Counterterrorism Agent Tracked Me Down Because I T... by jonah on Tuesday July 15, 2014 @02:19AM (#8035060)
Yeah. Crazy/evil people. Gotta keep an eye on 'em.

What I'm talking about is an 80 year old guy who is well documented for professionally photographing public art.

When they saw someone taking pictures of that piece there could be a couple reasons: A) he's scoping it out to come back later and lob an RPG at it, B) he's working on the second edition of his book you can buy on Amazon.

They don't need to talk to the guy to find out which one it is. That's what I'm saying.

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