This being the first of many: He was arrested not for a crime he committed (apparently, though stealing credit cards is definitely a crime) or even one he was planning, but for something he'd been planning but decided against. On the one hand, this guy and his pals certainly shouldn't be on the street. Conspiracy to commit murder is also a crime, after all, but something about arresting someone for something they'd decided NOT to do is unsettling to me. In this case there's the conspiracy angle, arguing he'd have just tried again later, but I'm a lot more comfortable knowing there are other crimes for which he can be tried.

This also bothers me a bit:

Obviously you want to visit areas the man frequented, look for and talk to people he's met, but if it's true the FBI was raiding whole neighborhoods and taking DNA samples, that sounds more like profiling a whole community because of one man. They didn't raid every dorm on campus after the shooting at Virginia Tech.

Yet, after all that, it's also disturbing that an apparent Al Qaeda operative went from working in Manhattan (what they call a "high value target" ) to driving shuttles at a major US airport. I'm taking what comfort I can from the thoughts that 1) They got him and 2) anyone interested in making explosives doesn't need the details of this article to know how easy it is to make them out of hydrogen peroxide and acetone.