**He Spent Years Infiltrating White Supremacist Groups. Here's What He Has to Say About What's Going

[Hortensis]

19. Agree. Interestingly, he says there are fewer homicides and

that the internet while used by hate groups has benefited law enforcement more than violent groups.

They use the internet more to communicate today than 20 years ago, ... but that doesn’t mean there is more violence. In fact, as the recent cases suggest, internet communications make them far easier to track and infiltrate, so it is more a boost to law enforcement more than to violent militants.

But mass monitoring of social media for clues isn’t an effective strategy, as there are far more people expressing racist ideas online than committing violence. The FBI would be very busy chasing down false leads, which would only dull the response. Instead, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies should ... The number of homicides in the U.S. has fallen significantly since the 1980s and 1990s, but so has the clearance rate. Even though there are fewer homicides now, fewer are being solved. I think it is because we are spending so much time and resources on suspicion-less surveillance and intelligence gathering rather than traditional evidence-based law enforcement tactics.

I'm guessing there would be plenty of both overlap and disagreement. From what I've been reading, most of these groups intend revolutionary overthrow of the liberal democracy they hate because it creates and maintains equality. In that, they're pulling the same direction as our other big enemies foreign and domestic -- those in the Republican Party, the religious right, and the wealthy right who can't win in a democratic system; also Russia, China, Iran, and other hostile nations who want to destroy us. All with the goal of actively attacking and undermining our democracy until it falls.

If true, it's hard to imagine we should cut back on surveillance and intelligence gathering. And sure, put as much effort as needed into identifying and stopping those who reach the evidence-producing (active planning and execution) stages also.