Getting an undercover official into a position of trust counts as 'infiltrated.' In the Portland bomber example, it was only a single guy, so it's rather weak form of 'infiltration.' I don't think that the Canadian examples count as infiltration. My point is that if these happened in the US, then they would have sent in undercover officers, and helped them execute their plan right to the point of 'pushing the button,' then swooping into to arrest them.
In a lot of these cases what's happening is that police "informants" are "infiltrating" groups with no serious means or ambition to carry out an act of terrorism. The informants, who are sometimes convicted criminals, are supplying all the plans, money, and weapons.
In the wake of 9/11 Canada passed the Anti-Terrorism Act. It's basically the Canadian version of the PATRIOT Act. The most controversial provisions of the law were given a 5 year sunset clause. That is, unless a future parliament extended them, they would be automatically repealed.
And wouldn't you know, just before those provisions expired the RCMP busts a huge terror plot in Canada. In this case the police had two moles: Shaikh and Elsohemy. Shaikh supplied the only weapon the so-called terrorists ever had... a single Glock pistol, which he let members of the group fire in the woods in between trips to Tim Hortons for coffee and to use bathroom. Elsohemy supplied the ammonium nitrate, which was stored in a warehouse a few blocks from the RCMP. None of the "terrorists" involved made any effort to obtain anything dangerous themselves. Of course, both informants were paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for their services by the government.
In spite of all this drama, the government failed to pass the extensions.
Now we have this alleged railway bombing plot in the news right on time for Bill S-7. What's bill S-7? I'll give you one guess.
Yes, it would be nice to have all the internal communication inside of the RCMP, CSIS, and other government departments concerning that case. Then we would know if it was just a coincidence or if the entire investigation was motivated by a desire for expanded law enforcement powers.
Either way, we should be skeptical of claims that we've been saved from murderous terrorists whenever all of the funds, weapons, explosives, and so on are provided by the government itself.
We should be extremely skeptical when politicians use such incidents to convince us that we should be afraid and that in order to be safe we just need to give the government more power to spy on us, detain and interrogate us without the right of habeas corpus.
