> On what basis do you make this assumption? The indictment is for racketeering and makes no mention of terrorism
I think the top comment about this being Atlanta's homeland security department or whatever threw me off.
Conspiring to do something. The something isn't important for my argument so long as it's a crime. That conspiring is the crime in progress or already done. For all intents and purposes, it's preëmptive to the actual thing we want to prevent. But that's why we criminalise, in addition to the crimes per se, possessions, intents, et cetera.
Police are not a purely reactive security element.
> I think the top comment about this being Atlanta's homeland security department or whatever threw me off.
Not even a local branch of DHS. Atlanta Police Department's Homeland Security Unit. I think that's the danger here. Regardless of the justifications or even the current legality I don't think it is reasonable to expect local police departments to carry out dragnet surveillance in an attempt to find crime because that's exactly what they will do.
Maybe I'm naive and there really are so many impending terrorist attacks that we need every medium sized city PD to have a homeland security unit. I don't think that's the case.
I think it is more likely the militarization of the police has expanded their scope so far they can no longer effectively police. When you have regular "intel reports" coming out of your "homeland security unit" the content isn't really important anymore. Everyone is a potential threat. If you dig deep enough you'll eventually be right.
> Conspiring to do something. The something isn't important for my argument so long as it's a crime.
When you view the world through the lens of "homeland security" any gathering looks like a criminal conspiracy.
Oh, it was this comment [1] and these charges [2]. It looks like the AG is standing by the charges [3]. The article references what look like credible calls for violence [4], which I suppose could transcend incitement of violence to domestic terrorism if they helped organise it.
Sure, and the AG might even be right! But that doesn't justify the surveillance as described. Is there any explanation of how this surveillance helped catch the handful of violent individuals, or if it is even useful to the case, or any justification of the collateral damage? As noted in the article, the mere existence of these lists has a chilling effect.
We live in a world where putting the right ball cap in the back window of your car can get you out of a lot of trouble. Knowing the local PD is scanning social media for objectionable (to them) content and doing god knows what with it has a chilling effect on speech.
On what basis do you make this assumption? The indictment is for racketeering and makes no mention of terrorism.