I’m going to repeat what I said last time, because it sums up my feelings on this:

Imagine how the public would feel about this if Islam and terrorism weren’t involved.

Suppose you took a poor, young, lonely, white American, who because of their socioeconomic circumstances and upbringing is at risk of leading a life of gang-related crime. Perhaps they’ve already expressed antagonism towards law enforcement, or are already using drugs (and thus are already technically doing illegal things).

You’re in authority. Which of the following two general approaches sounds better to you?

Approach #1: You befriend them and give them a job, perhaps a trade. You encourage them into the respectable and legal workforce, and perhaps try to help them complete their education. If they’re addicted to something, you help them get off it, so they don’t mix with criminals any more. You give them a circle of peers of people who got out of bad situations so they have someone to talk with and lean on should that be necessary.

Approach #2: You befriend them, and secretly groom them into joining a fake criminal gang. You start by giving them small tasks which aren’t necessarily criminal acts in and of themselves, provide them with an income which they understand is from illegal sources, and promise them more if they participate more fully. Then you stage a big crime, perhaps a bank robbery or a drug deal, and encourage this person to be involved. At this point, you spring the trap, arrest them and congratulate yourself that you’ve taken a dangerous person off the street.

Does anyone, anywhere, think that approach #2 is ever the right idea? If it were ever found to have happened, there would be hell to pay!

If you want to stop people ending up in organised crime groups, regardless of whether those groups are trying to sell meth or trying to blow up buildings, you should be doing everything you can to steer them away from those gangs. This should be a no-brainer but, as Lawrence Lessig would say, there are apparently no brains involved here.

Hell, it’d even make some kind of logic had they used the kid as bait to try to catch someone higher up the chain. I’d still feel sorry for the kid, but at least it would have been more-or-less productive work for a law enforcement agency.

I don’t want to give the wrong impression here. The sort of people the FBI locates are probably the sort of impressionable, easily-swayed individuals who could be radicalised into committing some horrible act. But something is deeply wrong when it’s the FBI doing the radicalising.