US Teen Pleads Guilty To Teaching ISIS About Bitcoin Via Twitter

jfruh writes: Ali Shukri Amin, a 17-year-old from Virginia, has pleaded guilty to charges that he aided ISIS by giving the group advice about using bitcoin. An odd and potentially troubling aspect of the charges is that this all took place in public — he Tweeted out links to an article on his blog about how bitcoin and Darknet could help jihadi groups, making it difficult to say whether he was publishing information protected under free speech or was directly advising the terrorist organization. Free speech qua speech isn't the only relevant charge, though: Amin "also admitted facilitating the travel of another teenager, 18-year-old Reza Niknejad, to Syria to join IS. Amin faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison if convicted."

Comments

Re:Mixture

[anagama]

If Peter King can be an elected Congressional member after supporting a terrorist group, why should the kid go to jail for less support?

What you are really supporting here is for an arbitrary designation of groups to have legal consequences, which means things have devolved down to the point that whoever is in charge gets to decide whether belonging to a group, or supporting a group, is worthy of being gulaged or disappeared. We're entering a very dangerous time I think, not from ISIS (*), but from our own government.

(*) ISIS can't do squat aside from engaging in random crimes in the US -- there's just no way they are an existential threat to America. They're like a stubbed toe -- annoying, momentarily painful, and totally not a big deal.