FBI interrogates this kid over a news article he read last Saturday

This is why you don't talk to the police without a lawyer. Forgot a stop at the ATM? Dropped something off at a friends house (who later turns out to be dealing drugs) and now you're lying to the police, or in this case the FBI which is a crime. Now if you end up getting charged with something not only do they present whatever evidence they may have but also your statements where they prove you lied and your credibility is shot.

>"Weapons, drugs? It's not a problem if you do, but if you don't tell me and then I find something, that's going to be a problem."

And now the investigation has broadened where the agent wants you to readily admit to a crime and give up the evidence but "It's totally cool we won't arrest you if you just admit to breaking the law."

Investigating potential terrorists is their job, after all. If someone reports a suspected terrorist, they would be fools to ignore it.

For the record, I'm a libertarian and _very_ concerned with our increasing lack of privacy, anonymity, and the security state we are creating. Having said that,

1) Please put the year in the title

2) Note the difference between domestic intelligence and domestic criminal work. Intelligence is concerned with patterns of behavior. If you can demonstrate that citizens who read X have a 10 times greater likelihood to do something violent, it may be in the state's interest to keep track of that information. This has nothing to do with state harassment or living in a security state: your local sheriff probably does something very similar and has done so for centuries. Police are expected to gather random pieces of trivia to try to reasonably predict if bad things are happening or are going to occur. (This is why such interviews are confidential -- and also why they are politically-charged.)

3. Please be aware that you are having your chains yanked -- a story told with the intention of making you emotionally respond -- and act accordingly.

4. You can only consume so much of this before it rots your brain. Yes, things are bad -- but they are not bad because people you agree with are able to write emotionally-charged articles implying police harassment. As I've demonstrated, it's way too easy to do this. Ad infinitum. They are bad because we create centralized control systems and rules for everybody, then herd the population through as if they were so much cattle. (TSA, voice monitoring of overseas calls, etc) In some cases these rules are probably appropriate. In some (most) cases not, but by forcing officials to choose one way or another, at the national level, majorities slowly and continually tyrannize minorities, just in different topic areas. It's the system that is broken, not some poor FBI schmucks having to go out and question some random guy over his reading habits.