US Official Admits That Following Terrorist Attacks, It Starts Arresting People Based On Ideology to 'Get Them Off The Streets'

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Nov. 17, 2015

CNN has one of those useless filler stories concerning the Paris attacks where it notes that the FBI will be ramping up wiretapping of suspected ISIS "sympathizers" in the wake of the attacks. That's sort of a dog bites man story if you think about it. What else are they going to do? However, as Adam Johnson notes, the article has a bizarre statement by an "anonymous" law enforcement official at the end. The story mostly talks about how the FBI similarly ramped up its wiretapping following the shootings in Garland, Texas, and then admits that law enforcement will then use that information to arrest people based on non-terrorism charges just to "get them off the street."

The Garland attack ushered in several months of stepped-up use of 24/7 monitoring on suspected ISIS supporters. FBI Director James Comey has described the period between May and July as one that stretched the FBI's resources, and that isn't sustainable. Dozens of arrests were made, in many cases not for terrorism-related charges if the FBI couldn't gather enough evidence of a plot.

"In some cases we just needed to get people off the streets," one senior law enforcement official said.

In other words, the wiretapping becomes a pretense to find anything to lock up people based on their ideological views, even if they're doing nothing related to terrorism. That seems like the very definition of a police state.