The idea is to preemptively arrest people for other crimes, rather than actually pin them with a terrorist attack, and there are definitely concerns there - especially if that person was not a threat, or was committing a minor offense or provoked by an informant. In the past the FBI had programs where they monitored and arrested activists, and these pre-emptive methods recall those programs. It's something worth keeping an eye on.

Journalist Jenna McLaughlin explains why the FBI's new, "disruption" based method of performance reporting obscures both the reality of threats the country faces and the orgainzation's policies and effectiveness in preventing them, and reports on the surveillance stakes behind the FBI / Apple phone hacking battle.

Jenna wrote about the recent articles FBI Won’t Explain Its Bizarre New Way of Measuring Its Success Fighting Terror and FBI Director Admits Apple Case Could Be a Game Changer at The Intercept.