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| Pictured: Militant Islamic Fighters that are wavings flags participate in a military parade on June 30, 2014 in Syria Source: http://www.foxnews.com/ |
These six people were able to communicate through means of Facebook and telephones. They tried to lay under the radar by using code words, such as “Bosnian Brothers” and “Lions.” In order to support the two groups, they sent payments through PayPal and sent many other tangible items overseas, such as combat boots, U.S. military uniforms, and first aid supplies.
It is hard to believe that those people were able to get away with what they did for a period of time. In today’s day and age in the United States, so many aspects of our lives are censored by the government, especially with social media and phone calls. Although they did use code words, one would think that the government would have noticed the suspicious actions of those individuals soon after they began sending those items overseas and sending payments through PayPal.
Moreover, it is alarming that there are people in the United States that support groups (Al Qaeda and ISIS/ISIL) that are huge threats to our country and the rest of the world. One of the ladies that was charged, Mediha Medy Salkicevic from Schiller Park, Illinois, is a mother of four. Those children attend the school district that my mom works for.
It’s crazy to think that people that support such dangerous groups can be those that live right around us.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS: 1) Do people in the United States have the right to support any group that they want to? Why or why not?
2) In terms of censorship, how should the U.S. government react to situations such as this one? Should the government be able to increase the amount of censorship? Or would that violate the privacy rights of individuals?
I thought the article you chose was very interesting and that it is a really important topic to become informed about. I think the U.S. government should be on high alert for individuals trying to join groups such as ISIS, and if it's possible, there should be a team doing research and collecting data so they can possibly point out code words in the future to prevent things like this. I think censorship, although intrusive, is necessary because it has the power to prevent dangerous events like this from happening. It is very lucky that the U.S. Government was able to catch these people before things got extremely serious.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you in the aspect that it is shocking that the government did not pick up on these actions and code words. Also, I can't believe that no one noticed the strange overseas shipments occurring. One would think that when these official supplies (i.e. military uniforms, etc.) the government would notice and take some further action.
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