Excerpts from "To Catch A Terrorist" (Harper's Magazine, Aug. 2011) by Petra Bartosiewisz

Photo credit: Times Union

On the trend of preemptive terrorism prosecutions:

When asked at a press conference following the sentencing whether there was anything connecting the defendants, particularly Aref, to terrorism, the prosecuting attorney answered, "Well, we didn’t have the evidence of that, but he had the ideology."

On the scope of Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs):

The Los Angeles Police Department was the first to introduce SARs. Among the “suspicious activities” listed on its website are joggers stretching “for an inordinate amount of time” and people carrying on “long conversations on pay or cellular phones.”

Read the article:
http://harpers.org/archive/2011/08/0083545

Petra Bartosiewicz' website:
http://www.petrabart.com/