... which is an interesting theory given the fact that the linked slides show them looking through information gathered from videos on bomb-making and abductions.
It's important to note that the kind of 'terrorism' being fought here is in fact a war and thus geopolitical.
First, jihad means holy war.
Second, we are in a 'war on terror', where we have deployed our militaries to neutralize and kill tens of thousands of people. If you think these people were terrorists that had not yet ever attacked anyone - "preterrorists" - then you suggest that the United States and allies have the right to be judge, jurer and executioner on people's intentions, and have the right to indiscriminately kill. But if you say they are soldiers, or factional forces, then the ethics and norms of war applies and it becomes acceptable for us to kill these people in mass, whether they have ever killed someone before or not.
Third, the uniting of forces in the Middle East against Israel and the mandates of the West (who in there eyes differ only in label and not in function from colonialists) have close to a century old history now of being an area of proxy war between other nations. During and after the first world war as punishment and destruction of the Ottoman empire and in the establishment of British control and extraction of resources from the region, and in the development of an Israel, and via the Sykes-Picot agreement the redrawing of boundaries to keep the area unstable and divided. During and after the Second World War as a proxy area of influence of the League of Nations and the USSR. During the Cold War between the USSR and NATO and today between Russia's Syria, a historically divided Egypt, and NATO's Israel.
The 'terrorist' label being targeted is in fact a type of guerrilla fighter, a soldier that is potentially recruitable to a United Arabia that has historically hated its occupation by the West. A soldier who is more likely to attack somewhere at home than even attempt to leave and do violence in a Western country. We do not drone strike any old guerrilla fighter, however. We drone strike the ones whose politics and infighting, at the current instance, are counter to the hopes and dreams of US foreign policy. Those Arabs who learn how to make homemade bombs that are against the Assad regime, for example, are absolutely allowed, even encouraged, to live.
I had to do some major plumbing repair recently. I watched a lot of plumbing videos on Youtube to make sure I was doing everything correctly, because I had never done any plumbing work before and was worried I might screw something up. If I wanted to construct an IED, I'd probably watch a lot of videos to make sure I was doing everything correctly, because I've never constructed a remotely detonated explosive device capable of destroying a large vehicle and I'd worry that I might screw something up.
That's quite the strawman argument you've shot back. It goes along nicely with the shifting goalposts - if you recall, the original argument I was replying to simply stated that these programs had nothing to do with terrorism.
My point in my previous comment was that most of the people watching videos on bomb-making are probably interested in building bombs. If you're trying to find people who want to blow stuff up, that's probably not a bad place to start looking. Nowhere in there did I say the government should be blowing up everyone who looks at the wrong Youtube video.
Yes, it's a shame that the US constitution doesn't prevent a Canadian intelligence agency from spying on kidnappers in Germany and Algeria who are uploading videos of their hostages, along with Kenyans downloading bomb-making videos from companies in Hong Kong (Megaupload), Switzerland (Rapidshare) and wherever sendspace.com is located (their terms of use just says 'not in the US').
> How would you know what the program's being used to look for?
Because I read the article and the accompanying Powerpoint slide deck, and those were the only concrete examples in it. You can't really make many hard conclusions beyond what was shown, and the examples that they did show weren't very infuriating...
