Wall Street Journal -- February 26th, 2015

¶ … Wall Street Journal -- February 26th, 2015 Brooklyn Men Are Accused of Aiding Militants Pervaiz Shallwani; Rebecca Davis O'Brien; Grossman, Andrew The Islamic State in Syria (ISIS), also referred to as ISIL, has had some success in using the web to spread propaganda and recruit support from many parts of the world. This has prompted the U.S.

law enforcement to try to prevent Americans from joining extremist groups in the Mideast or acting on their behalf in the U.S.; top law-enforcement officials have cited threats from Islamic State as among the biggest risks to U.S. national security (Shallwani, O'Brien, & Grossman, 2015). The article covers three individuals that have been recently for attempting and conspiring to provide material support to ISIS which, if convicted, can carry a prison term of fifteen years in prison.

There is a global effort to stop the material support to ISIS and ISIL but more than three thousand European Citizens have traveled to Syria since 2012 and many of those who have returned have been arrested and charged with terrorism. All three of the men in the United States that were arrested had been making statements of support for ISIS and have even gone as far as expressing their intentions to carry out terrorist activities.

One man offered on a website that he would try to kill President Obama and become a martyr. Another announced online that he was planning to carry out a bomb attack at the amusement park at Coney Island in Brooklyn. Discussion This article was selected because it is interesting to try to apply interpersonal and group behavior in terrorism networks. Much of the activity is apparently being conducted online.

The ISIS network is reaching out to supporters on webpages and apparently using social media and chat rooms to recruit support and interact with each other. However, despite the use of the internet to communicate, these can still be considered groups that are subject to group behaviors. It is also interesting to consider to whether or not these individuals would actually carry out the crimes that they mention to each other online. People can say things in a group context that they might not voice otherwise.

For example, the individual that was arrested for announcing that he would try to kill the President online may not have had any actual intention of doing so in reality. However, there is actually a law prohibiting people from plotting to kill the President. Yet announcing the plot to bomb Coney Island could be considered a free speech issue. Compare this with similar types of groups that support different athletic teams.

A member of a fan club for the sports team could say something like "go kill the other team" or "I'm going to kill that referee." The normal tendency is to exaggerate claims in the context of a group that they would not say otherwise. Even so, when a sports fan says something to the effect of "I'm going to kill that referee," then people generally don't take this as a serious death threat.

However, if the same types of behaviors occur in a group that has anything to do with terrorism, either directly or indirectly, then they could potentially be subjected to harsh criminal penalties; even if they did not actually have any real plans to support the terrorist groups and their behaviors were primarily due to being part of an online group and limited to discussions online.

It is also interesting that members of these groups are communicating in such a manner online especially since the extent of online monitoring from the U.S. surveillance agencies has recently been exposed through a series of leaked information. Another aspect of the group behavior perspective could also be applied to the FBI and the other agents who could be thought of as groups.

For example, members of the FBI could be more interested in making arrests and being productive members of their "teams" than following certain protocols or considering the actual motivations and intentions of the suspects. The two different sides of groups could be thought of as members of opposing sports fans; except obviously the stakes are much higher in the terrorist example.

For example, some people have accused the FBI's use of confidential informants as being unlawful in certain situations because they can actually lead a suspect to say and do things in the group context that they would have otherwise not done. For example, an informant could act like a facilitator that allowed the group to work towards tasks more efficiently when they would have been less productive without someone filling this role. The article is relevant to the course from several perspectives.

One perspective would be how groups organize and communicate online. There are likely different dynamics found in online groups that would not apply in the same ways to groups that meet face-to-face. For example, it is reasonable to believe that people may say more extreme things in an.