700 arrests made to avert election terrorist attack
Jihad Watch points to an AP story:
More than 700 people were arrested on immigration violations and thousands more subjected to FBI interviews in an intense government effort to avert a terrorist attack aimed at disrupting the election.
As with past unrealized al Qaeda threats, law-enforcement officials said yesterday they don’t know for sure whether any of those arrests or interviews foiled an attack.
This is the big problem with preventive controls. We may have changed the future by thwarting an attack… or we may have violated somebody’s rights. I wonder how many terrorist attacks have been prevented since 9/11… Of course, it is hard to tell whether somebody’s infringed rights are worth the benefit of a foregone attack. And hard to prove whether this is the case as well.
Thank you. I was trying to write that.
I do think that if we were thwarting attacks, we would see more people arrested with tools, explosives, maps, plans, etc. But maybe they’re being administratively detained to manage information flow.
I don’t quite believe that we do. If we had good evidence of another attack, it would have been trotted out in the run-up to the election.