"But this line of government creepiness just doesn't apply to the Briana Waters case. There is no evidence at all that she was pursued by the FBI because she was an activist. There is no evidence that the government obtained evidence against her that would have been illegally obtained were it not for the post-9/11 anti-terrorism laws."

I agreed with much of your letter, but I want to respond to this point.

While the arson occurred before 9/11, the investigation mostly occurred after 9/11. We know that the US specifically identified these types environmentally-motivated acts as terrorism falling under post 9/11 law. We know that the telecoms were allowing the feds to look at all traffic passing through their hubs. Olympia (and Evergreen College) was particularly suspect not only for environmental protest, but for anti-war protest, including protests at its port over naval ships. Seattle of course was the recent site of the WTO protests, and nearby Portland was the home of that Muslim lawyer who was railroaded by the feds for the bombings in Spain.

You may be right to suggest that all that is happening in this case is prosecutorial misconduct. I'm just asking, how would we know? The story of the informant seems a little pat to me, but maybe that's how it all went down. Who knows?

The story presents a chain of discovery that began with a "heroin-addicted drifter pyromaniac" informant. How did the FBI identify this individual, and how did it identify the others across the country for the informant to visit with a wire? We seem to be asked to believe a contradiction here. The informant is a loser, but also a super undercover agent with excellent memory, extensive knowledge of a secretive undercover network, and the knowledge of real names behind aliases.

Perhaps the federal government correctly identified the participants in the arson, but has not been altogether complete in how it obtained all of its evidence, nor shared all of its methods or evidence with the defense. The feds admit that they see this case as terrorism, and we know that evidence-gathering for terroristic activities follows different, and fewer, rules. If it were possible to pass off a legal wiretap as the source of evidence, why reveal that the original source was from spying and the wiretap confirmed the evidence?

I'd also suggest the reverse: if the government did acquire evidence under domestic spying powers, it would have even more incentive to inflate the charges to include terrorism as a way of covering its collective ass in a changing climate if its methods were ever revealed.

Many crimes terrify people, and are meant to cause terror. But not all of these crimes fall under terrorism statutes, which give the government broad authority. Why is the government so eager to get terrorism convictions in this case when arson alone carries heavy penalties? Perhaps because it's scared of something more than ELF.

Whatever the particulars of the feds behavior investigating this case, I think we may agree that the government has undermined its credibility in regards to the rule of law in criminal investigations.

The feds basically want it both ways. They want to secretly monitor all the information on the internet and not tell us how they use it. Then they want to turn around and claim they followed proper rules in investigating cases. Particularly in "terror" cases, it is entirely reasonable to assume that they are lying or obfuscating about their evidence and methods, since secrecy about sources and methods is part of the overall anti-terror strategy. A good way to coverup secret methods is to find the same information through a legitimate source.

It is an incredible affront to civil liberties to define as terrorism crimes committed by citizens for political reasons. And that includes crimes against abortion clinics or environmental targets or white supremacy or what have you. Yes the feds should go after arson done for any reason. But the "terror" logic just applies Gitmo jurisprudence to US citizens.