Well the controversy arises over whether or not the way their actions are dealt with is fair in any way. One point to make is that the Earth Liberation Front and the Animal Liberation Front are both considered terrorist groups by the FBI, and are frequently referred to as being the biggest domestic threat facing America. Yet no one has ever died as a result of an "act of ecoterrorism" so how come "ecoterrorists" get multiple life sentences for committing crimes that only damage property and often don't actually endanger the life of any person at all, along with being labeled terrorists or members of terrorist organizations? And why are those labels thrown onto ALF and ELF but not attached to White Supremacist groups, or radical anti-abortion groups, both of whom have actually killed people? No one disagrees that they are radicals (correction, no one sane) but many believe the government is taking it too far by condemning them as terrorists, handing out over the top penalties, and in some states pushing legislature that will actually make the death penalty a viable punishment for an act of ecoterrorism (again, note that no one has ever been killed in any of these acts of "terrorism"). James Jarboe, the chief of the FBI's counterterrorism division, defined ecoterrorism as "the use or threatened use of violence of a criminal nature against innocent victims or property by an environmentally-oriented, sub national group for environmental-political reasons, or aimed at an audience beyond the target, often of a symbolic nature.” These definitions of terrorism open the door to violent acts against property only being defined as acts of terrorism, and go against the accepted definition promoted by the International Policy Ins!@#$%^&*ute for Counter-Terrorism, which states that “the targets of terrorism are civilians” and stresses the fact that the acts are usually purposely directed against civilians.