

College Student in Queens Is Charged with Conspiring to Support ISIS - Errorcod3
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/17/nyregion/college-student-in-queens-is-charged-with-conspiring-to-support-isis.html

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therobot24
lets break it down:

1) Posts views on twitter that are controversial to say the least, e.g., 'Al
Qaeda was "getting too moderate,"'

\-- Not illegal, but will definitely put you on the Gov radar, it's probably
at this point he had some surveillance on him (through web or otherwise)

2) On two consecutive days in March, a Port Authority police officer saw Mr.
Saleh walking on the George Washington Bridge and looking around.

\-- Circumstantial at best

3) evidence that he was "translating ISIL propaganda into English."

\-- Not illegal that i know of, though they don't specify if he's not a native
speaker. If he could read it already in Arabic why is it a big deal that he's
translating it?

4) receiving laboratory training in electrical circuitry at his college

\-- he's a student..."honing skills that the complaint called 'useful in the
construction of an explosive device.'" Conjecture and profiling

5) conducted extensive online searches for materials for an explosive device,
the complaint says, including Crock-Pots, beads, propane, vacuum cleaners,
lamps and watches. A watch was the only one of those materials that the
complaint says he bought.

\-- In my embedded systems class in undergrad we made a 'movie-prop bomb', had
a countdown timer, monitored wires, display, etc. Fun project, i'm sure a lot
of my searches during that time got me on a few lists.

6) walk into a spy store in Queens that sells microphone detectors and hidden
cameras, though he left without any bags. He later searched online for
disguises, including beards and wigs.

\-- as the article states he was being followed by agents, i'm sure that's
enough to make anyone paranoid

7) conversation between a confidential informant and Mr. Saleh in May, during
which Mr. Saleh said, “Well I’m in N.Y. and trying to do an op,”

\-- this is probably the most damning piece of evidence, but it relies pretty
heavily on the quality of the informant

8) agents saw Mr. Saleh and two unnamed co-conspirators try to elude a
surveillance car in their green Jeep Cherokee by speeding through a parking
lot with their lights off and pulling over. Later, around 4 a.m., near the
Whitestone Expressway in Queens, Mr. Saleh and one of the co-conspirators got
out of the Jeep and ran toward the surveillance car

\-- he was being followed and got scared, could have been running toward it in
an effort to confront whoever it was to tell them he'd had enough

I'm not saying there isn't a case here, but a lot of it seems shaky, a few
pieces got him on their radar and after that, well, if you search hard enough
you'll usually find what you're looking for

