Neighborhood Watch?

CBS News correspondent Randall Pinkston reports that a tip from Shannen Rossmiller – a judge from Conrad, Montana who in 2004 helped snare a Washington state national guardsman who was considering defecting to al Qaeda – was what pointed the FBI to Reynolds.

“Rossmiller was scanning terrorist websites when she noticed a post from Reynolds seeking $40,000 dollars to by fuel trucks to blow up refineries in New Jersey and Wyoming and a section of the Alaska oil pipeline,” said Pinkston.

My first thought was why wasn’t the government taking this obvious step, monitoring web sites associated with terrorists and setting up stings. They do it to catch child molesters, so why aren’t they doing it to catch terrorists?

The other thing that bothered me is the interaction between law enforcement and “amateurs”. They are generally referred to as “vigilantes”, “meddlers”, and other less kind terms, so having the same individual involved in two different cases is odd.

Then I saw Scout Prime’s article on First Draft and things came into focus.

The story of 7 Seas Global Intelligence is “fishy”. The use of Realtime Spyware is probably falls under the heading of an illegal wiretap making the results unusable in court and therefore a waste of time without a warrant. If the Feds used any of that information to obtain a warrant, the warrant isn’t valid.

This smells of another Federal program to trash the criminal justice system in an attempt to show that they are doing something about terrorists. As a judge, Ms. Rossmiller should be aware of how far from legal her efforts actually are.

Oh, $40,000 wouldn’t by[sic] one tanker, much less multiples, just check used truck listings. The offer was obviously ridiculous. This effort seems to be more appropriate for mental health professionals than law enforcement, and it certainly does nothing to make me feel safer.