FBI Says It Will Hire No One Who Lies About Illegal Downloading 580
wabrandsma writes with this excerpt from The State Hornet, the student newspaper at Sacramento State On Monday, Sacramento State's Career Center welcomed the FBI for an informational on its paid internship program where applications are now being accepted. One of the highly discussed topics in the presentation was the list of potential traits that disqualify applicants. This list included failure to register with selective services, illegal drug use including steroids, criminal activity, default on student loans, falsifying information on an application and illegal downloading music, movies and books. FBI employee Steve Dupre explained how the FBI will ask people during interviews how many songs, movies and books they have downloaded because the FBI considers it to be stealing. During the first two phases of interviews, everything is recorded and then turned into a report. This report is then passed along to a polygraph technician to be used during the applicant's exam, which consists of a 55-page questionnaire. If an applicant is caught lying, they can no longer apply for an FBI agent position. (Left un-explored is whether polygraph testing is an effective way to catch lies.)
Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:5, Funny)
Hopefully at some point in time the FBI will realize that their mission shouldn't be to protect corporate rights, but to protect rights for the individual citizens.
Re:Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI is a federal law enforcement agency. Their mission is to enforce federal law.
Re:Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem is that there is no federal law against downloading. There is about copying and distributing which whoever offers it for download would definitely be doing but no law against you downloading it. All the court cases you see about it stem from the illegal distribution.
The article says "illegal" downloading. I wonder how many applicants will answer no because they never shared anything and be disqualified because their sweep of meta data indicated otherwise? I wonder how many will admit to illegally downloading who has not according to the letter of the law? And since it is a government employer, I wonder what the constitutional implications are if they have a trove of data which was meant to catch terrorist that they use in validating your eligibility for employment.
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The only problem is that there is no federal law against downloading. There is about copying and distributing which whoever offers it for download would definitely be doing but no law against you downloading it.
If you use bittorrent, you are distributing while you download.
Re:Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:5, Informative)
If you use bittorrent, you are distributing while you download.
Depends on whether you mean the client called "bittorrent", or the BitTorrent protocol.
There's nothing in the protocol that says you "have to" upload in order to download. That's something that's built into most of the clients, on the reasoning that if nobody shares, there will be nothing to download.
I disagree: people have shown themselves to be willing to share things regardless of any such rules.
Further, the laws against "piracy", (which is NOT the same as downloading), were intended primarily to punish people who make bulk copies of copyrighted works and sell them for a profit. That's essentially what "copyright piracy" means. It's a legal term. And downloading doesn't qualify. Downloading isn't a "crime" at all. It's just a copyright violation. Piracy, on the other hand, is a crime.
Some of the biggest differences are:
[A] Almost all downloaders are doing it for personal use, not for profit. A reasonable penalty for that would be lost profits to the copyright holder (which is almost always far, far lower than the retail price), so for example copying a DVD might be a total loss of profits to the copyright holder of not more than about 50 cents. PLUS a "statutory penalty", which courts use to discourage such behavior. A rather large fine for creating a "loss of profit" of 50 cents might be 50 dollars... 100 times the actual damage.
[B] A very big problem with that is that studies have been showing for over 15 years now that in the vast majority of cases of downloading, there never would have been a sale (or rental) in the first place. So even 50 cents "damage" to the copyright holder as in [A] is more theoretical than actual. Further, downloaders give the actual product free word-of-mouth advertising, further mitigating any "damage".
It doesn't matter what the FBI "considers" downloading to be. THE LAW says it isn't a crime. And it sure as hell isn't "stealing". They are two very, very distinct areas of the law. When you steal from somebody, you deprive them of the use of the stolen item. When you copy a copyrighted work, you haven't deprived anyone of that work. Any "damage" is purely theoretical and must, logically, be tied to any lost profit from that particular copy.
Statutory damages that were originally intended for bulk, profitable piracy are not appropriate for individual downloaders. At all. That whole mess was nothing but "crony capitalism" at work. And lots of people have suffered a lot, as a result.
Re:Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:5, Informative)
Further, the laws against "piracy", (which is NOT the same as downloading)
There are no laws against "piracy" per se; rather there are laws against copyright infringement, which downloading commonly is.
were intended primarily to punish people who make bulk copies of copyrighted works and sell them for a profit.
The statute doesn't require infringement en masse, nor does it require selling them for a profit. Perhaps you'd like to read it? It's 17 USC 501. It refers to other sections, in particular 17 USC 106, and 101.
That's essentially what "copyright piracy" means. It's a legal term.
No it's not. The correct legal term would be copyright infringement.
And downloading doesn't qualify. Downloading isn't a "crime" at all. It's just a copyright violation.
No, any copyright infringement which meets the prerequisites of 17 USC 506 is a crime. For example, if you willfully download a work in an infringing manner, and that work has a retail value of over $1,000 (easily doable with certain computer programs), that's a criminal infringement.
And it sure as hell isn't "stealing"
This is the first, and perhaps only thing in your post that's correct.
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> If you use bittorrent, you are distributing while you download.
You know that and I know that. Welcome to the 1%. Most other people don't realize that. HELL, a lot of church lady types don't even know that pirating stuff is even "immoral" or illegal or anything.
Real life is funny that way.
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Huh, I missed a meeting. What's the new tech?
Re: Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:3, Funny)
Usenet
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It's based on a lie detector test. If they sincerely believe they did nothing wrong, there will be no stress for the lie detectors to pick up.
And likewise, some people who feel really guilty about the issue may show stress.
There will probably be some false positives too.
So the FBI will end up hiring people who don't feel downloading is illegal and those who don't feel stress when lying.
Re:Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually, no there is not. There is no provision in law that makes obtaining copyrighted materials illegal if the copyright owner doesn't consent other than copying and distributing. If somehow I missed it, show me.
Nope. There is no provision in law about downloading or any activity close to it. If you purchase a DVD from a street merchant and it turns out to be counterfeit, you have broken no copyright law.
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Nope, the person offering it for download is making the copy and distributing it. To equate this with older tech, I write a paper in which I plagiarize the entire works of other people. You say you would like a copy of the paper so I leave copies at the door and you pick one up on your way in. You have violated no law even though it is essentially the same as if I offered it electronically and you accessed it.
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Nope, the person offering it for download is making the copy and distributing it.
A copy is defined in the Copyright Act (17 USC 101) as a material object in which a copy is fixed. A hard drive is a material object, a flash drive is a material object, RAM is a material object. But data coming in over the network is not a material object. The downloader causes that data to be written to some sort of storage medium on his end, thereby making a new copy. The person on the other end of the connection is in trouble too, but it is clear in the statute, and settled in the caselaw, that download
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The FBI considers downloading to be illegal despite any law making it so. Unless downloading has morphed into one of those words like CPU (the actual CPU or as some think, the computer tower itself) with several meanings and I have yet to discover the one in use in this sentence, there should be cause for concern.
Downloading involves making copies, and unauthorizedly making copies of copyrighted works is infringing, unless there's an applicable exception to copyright. This is well-established.
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He meant a REPUTABLE citation, preferably by someone with a 4-digit or less UID. Not some "9th circuit" armchair judge.
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But whats relevant is that the action they take is based on whether you lie about it. ... If they said they wouldnt hire you if you lied about wearing white after labor day, I wouldnt blame them. Theyre trusting you with a lot of power, if you have a penchant for lying you shouldnt be hired.
That argument would make sense, provided that they were somewhat more comprehensive about the domains they're checking. Because if you were right, there would be absolutely no liars in the FBI. I somehow doubt that this is the case. If it's not the case, it seems somewhat debatable whether this is about lying. Or even about merely having ever violated any federal law, because they seem to be awfully specific. Arguing that they are actually trying to do anything broader than filter people who download stuff
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Do those who browse the websites infringe plaintiff's copyright?
The first question, then, is whether those who browse any of the three infringing websites are infringing plaintiff's copyright. Central to this inquiry is whether the persons browsing are merely viewing the Handbook (which is not a copyright infringement), or whether they are making a copy of the Handbook (which is a copyright infringement). See 17 U.S.C. 106.
"Copy" is defined in the Copyright Act as: "material objects . . . in which a work is fixed by any method now known or later developed, and from which the work can be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated, either directly or with the aid of a machine or device." 17 U.S.C. 101. "A work is fixed' . . . when its . . . sufficiently permanent or stable to permit it to be perceived, reproduced, or otherwise communicated for a period of more than transitory duration." Id.
When a person browses a website, and by so doing displays the Handbook, a copy of the Handbook is made in the computer's random access memory (RAM), to permit viewing of the material. And in making a copy, even a temporary one, the person who browsed infringes the copyright. n5 See MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., 991 F.2d 511, 518 (9th Cir. 1993) (holding that when material is transferred to a computer's RAM, copying has occurred; in the absence of ownership of the copyright or express permission by licence, such an act constitutes copyright infringement); Marobie-Fl., Inc. v. National Ass'n of Fire Equip. Distrib., 983 F. Supp. 1167, 1179 (N.D. Ill. 1997) (noting that liability for copyright infringement is with the persons who cause the display or distribution of the infringing material onto their computer); see also Nimmer on Copyright 8.08(A)(1) (stating that the infringing act of copying may occur from "loading the copyrighted material . . . into the computer's random access memory (RAM)"). Additionally, a person making a printout or re-posting a copy of the Handbook on another website would infringe plaintiff's copyright.
Footnote n5: Although this seems harsh, the Copyright Act has provided a safeguard for innocent infringers. Where the infringer "was not aware and had no reason to believe that his or her acts constituted an infringement of copyright, the court in its discretion may reduce the award of statutory damages. . . ." 17 U.S.C. 504(c)(2).
Now, since then there has been the Cablevision case, where the 2d Circuit said that a work that was momentarily buffered in RAM (in that case, by a network provider) was not a copy because it lasted for too short a duration. But this is not likely to have much effect for the end user.
Also, your example is wrong. Copyright infringement is a strict liability offense, so the mental state (e.g. intent, knowledge) of the infringer is irrelevant.
A better example would be statutory rape, another strict liability o
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Their first mission is to protect the constitution, from all threats foreign or domestic. This includes the part of the Constitution where copyright is for "a limited time" and for the purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts". Maybe they should exclude from the hiring pool anyone who owns copyright for an absurd period of time, or who uses copyright or patents to prevent progress?
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It is just an example of how vague the Constitution actually is and how, by quoting specific parts, a lot of opposing views can be seen as Constitutional.
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The FBI is a federal law enforcement agency. Their mission is to enforce federal law.
Not anymore. They changed it recently. The first part is to protect and defend the United States against terrorist and foresight intelligence threats. The criminal justice part comes second.
So what kind of people are they going to get? Any twenty-something who hasn't illegally downloaded music or movies probably fits into one of the following categories:
1. Computer illiterate.
2. Spoiled brat because their parents kept their iTunes gift card loaded all the way through high school and college.
3. Too poor
Felony (Score:2)
Copyright infringement has been criminal for a while now--they just very rarely treat it criminally because they have limited resources and it would usually be ridiculous to treat it criminally. Basically you have a felony for what should get a parking ticket.
Re:Fewer candidates to draw from... (Score:5, Funny)
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The government is working at this from the other angle. More the rights they eliminate the closer we come to having them 100% protected!
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Hopefully at some point in time the FBI will realize that their mission shouldn't be to protect corporate rights, but to protect rights for the individual citizens.
by which the geek means the citizen who can afford a computer, broadband Internet.
pirating music, games, videos and other digital services and software is and always has been a middle class entitlement.
individual rights mean damn little when you are "constitutionally" unable to work together to achieve your goals and protect your interests.
Polygraph (Score:5, Insightful)
The polygraph, along with IQ tests, are a very American forms of superstition.
Re:Polygraph (Score:5, Insightful)
The polygraph, along with IQ tests, are a very American forms of superstition.
Yeah, quite a few hipsters that got less than ideal IQs go out of their way at every opportunity to deride the single most precise intellectual measure known to man.
Re:Polygraph (Score:5, Funny)
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A multimeter which always reads zero is the most precise meter possible. Precision isn't accuracy.
And Abrahamic God is the single most powerful myth known to man. Unique doesn't imply useful.
My IQ is 142, my net earnings are ~$90k/year, my highest qualification is a PhD in mathematics, and you're an idiot.
The Wrong Argument (Score:3)
My IQ is 54 points higher.... and I am Young Earth Creationist.
This is probably not the point you want to make while arguing that IQ tests are accurate....and the fact that you did make it only compounds the irony.
Re:Polygraph (Score:5, Interesting)
What's an ideal IQ? 200? 500? The scale is open ended at the top, and even a perfect score on different tests equates to a different maximum.
Plus, I'm pretty sure that your "less than ideal" would apply to some of the most brilliant people in history (James Clerk Maxwell, estimated IQ 115 (note that people who achieved something that applied to practical discipline, such as engineering or medicine, seldom did it nearly as early as precocious musicians and novelists, and so are always estimated lower unless the estimater includes a fudge factor. Mozart gets estimated much higher than Beethoven without that, because he started at 6, not 22. The way the fudge factor is calculated is to simply set both those great musicians to an (apparently arbitrary) 165, and adjust for age of first composition based on that ratio in calculating other historic musicians scores - this makes Wagner among the very elite, and Bach only 'fair to middlin').
Or try Charles Darwin, and Copernicus, both estimated IQ 160, (The same score, as Dolph Lungren's actual test results). President Bush (41) scored a 98 - his son Bush (43) scored 125. Steven Hawking scored "only" 160, same as the estimated score for Einstein - both are eclipsed by actor James Woods and John Sunnunu (180 actual score each)
President Carter scored at least 10 points above any other president or presidential candidate of the 20th or early 21st centuries, and of the current crop, Hillary Clinton is 5 points lower than Carter, but still beats everybody else that has shown any interest in running this time by at least anoher 10 points.
So I'm going to take this oportunity to deride the test - look maw, I'm a hipster!
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> President Bush (41) scored a 98 [...]
You've been fooled by at least one hoax. Somebody invented a collection of "presidential IQs" in order to claim Democrats are smarter than Republicans. There is no evidence for several of the values you give, including specifically that score of 98. Here's the debunk:
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/... [snopes.com]
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+1 yes. along with Ouija boards and e-meters.
does streaming porn count? (Score:2)
I mean it exists in a legal grey water, I think. I'm talking about sites like pornhub.
Re:does streaming porn count? (Score:4, Informative)
I found one weird trick to stream every GoT episode from bing videos - search for "game of thrones". Seriously. it's so stupid how MS is so viciously focused on licenses and piracy on one hand, but on the other hand in a mad scramble to catch up to youtube will stream all manner of ripped tv shows, movies and pr0n. It's a seriously sketchy place.
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What? That's not stupid at all. Microsoft is focused on licenses and piracy when it's their shit and don't care about anyone else's. That's perfectly logical. Same as the musicians you hear about illegally copying graphic art.
It makes them hypocrites, not stupid.
FBI has no clue (Score:4, Insightful)
I suspect this will be quietly dropped in the near future when they see their supply of young recruits dwindle to nothing.
Re:FBI has no clue (Score:5, Insightful)
No. It will dwindle to include only young sociopaths who can fool a lie detector.
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You don't need to be a sociopath to beat a "lie detector". They are incredibly easy to "fool", not that there is anything to fool anyway because they aren't worth anything. Their only value is a that people think they do work because of all the propaganda and they convince people to submit to questioning without a lawyer present that they otherwise would never agree to.
They don't allow lie detectors to be used in court for precisely that reason, they are utterly unreliable.
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
NSA are most egregious downloaders (Score:5, Funny)
The irony is off the charts (Score:5, Insightful)
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I don't know if they wouldn't hire people who have downloaded some songs from an illicit source or whatever - maybe they don't. Their potential employee pool would sure be rather small, though.
However, the article seems to suggest that they're asking this question, and if you are caught lying in your answer to that question, that you are then ineligible to apply for a posi
Re:The irony is off the charts (Score:5, Insightful)
They are looking for people who will do anything their superiors tell them to do. This particular bit is about finding people who don't do stuff the authorities declare illegal. This is all about obedience, not about "not doing illegal stuff".
Sweet, online enforcement is going out of business (Score:2)
Polygraph (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought polygraphs were most notable for giving a lot of false positives.
That's really not such a bad characteristic for security clearances.
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False positives create selection bias. A polygraph detects people that are *nervous about there lies*. It won't detect the unaware and clueless, because they do not know they did anything wrong. Most people download songs to their iPhone, and assume it is legal. The polygraph not detect people that assume they are innocent. On the other hand, some people lie all of the time. A sociopath will pass the lie-detector test [rationalwiki.org] because they don't believe they are lying, and one person in 25 is a sociopath.
Thes
It's Not Unexplored (Score:2)
Lie detectors themselves have been proven time and time again to be utterly unreliable in actually detecting lies.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
They are used not to detect truth or lies, they are used as a tool of intimidation. It is a high tech corollary to the bright light shone in the face of someone being grilled in the police interrogation room.
Also left unexplored... (Score:3)
... is whether "piracy" is actually stealing much less criminal.
Calling all Luddites (Score:2, Insightful)
In my experience, about 99% of videos on Youtube and images on Google image search have been illegally published without the rights holder's permission, so I guess they have to further restrict their applicants - good luck finding recruits that have never used those - maybe try the Amish?
Nuance (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
SubjectsInCommentsAreStupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple and Amazon (Score:2)
Ominous signs (Score:2)
Way to go (Score:2)
if you want a conservative monoculture.
polygraph? (Score:3)
shoot, thought everyone already knew how to beat them?
(butt "clenching" technique, anyone?)
Ironic. (Score:5, Insightful)
The FBI doesn't want its agents to lie, or default on student loans (the latter is often simply a matter of economics, not honesty), but yet the Snowden documents reveal that the FBI commits perjury in federal court to hide the true, illegal sources of information they got from the NSA. Described here, http://www.alexaobrien.com/sec... [alexaobrien.com] Search for "Parallel Construction"
So they hire second grade material? (Score:4, Interesting)
One of my former bosses said "you can get good people, available people and people with no police record. Pick two"
Time and experience has shown me that "good people" and "people with no police record" has become more and more synonymous as more and more inane laws are being pushed into existence. You don't get "good" in this field if you're learning it from text books. Ponder this for a moment: Malware analysis consists to a rather big portion of looking at decompiled code someone else wrote and quickly identifying specific sections, often involving reverse engineering some kind of encryption or obfuscation. Now where do you think you would almost invariably have to develop that skill set. Little hint: It ain't really a very legal activity.
Most of the "good" security people I know didn't get there by choosing it as a career and studying. They got there because they ... well, wanted to accomplish something.
And if they're good at it, they never got caught doing it...
My personal experience (Score:5, Interesting)
I applied to the CIA when I was looking at finishing grad school about 4 years back. As with the FBI, one of the things they mentioned was illegal downloading, of which I had done quite a bit while in college. I mean, we're talking hundreds of films, thousands of TV episodes, thousands of audio tracks, both foreign and domestic for all of those, from any number of decades, genres, and budget sizes.
I was upfront with them about it during a pre-screening interview held at my school's campus. I actually brought it up with them and asked if it'd be a problem. They indicated it wouldn't be, and formally invited me to fill out a proper application with them so that they could advance me through the process.
I answered truthfully regarding it on the application and any subsequent questionnaires that I had to fill out. I never got any word back regarding that specifically, but their response was to ask me to fly up to Washington D.C. for a three-day session with them, which I did.
I provided exacting details regarding my illegal downloading to the polygraph examiner at my polygraph session, as well as to anyone else who asked about it. I let them know the quantity, nature of the content, and how recently I had engaged in it. I passed the polygraph with flying colors and was told I didn't even need to come in for the second session they had scheduled since they were confident I told the truth about everything (and I had...in excruciating detail, in fact, just because I knew, being the pedant that I am, that if I left out any little detail, I really would be considering myself to be lying; as an aside, one of the other applicants I was hanging out with lied to them about the recency of his drug use and got caught in his lie).
And how did they respond to all of this? They asked me when it would be convenient to move on to the final stage of the application process (a thorough background check...which I'm confident I would have easily passed), since the folks I'd be working with were excited about bringing me onboard and wanted to keep things moving. Which is to say, the fact that I had downloaded loads of files illegally in the past clearly wasn't a problem. They let me know that it'd need to stop and that it would come up again in the every-five-years polygraph everyone working there submits to, but otherwise, they made it clear to me, both explicitly through their words and implicitly through their deeds that they really didn't have a problem with me having engaged in it at a relatively large scale in the past.
P.S. Just to state what I hope is obvious: an actual polygraph session is NOTHING like what is shown on TV (the room was well-lit, there wasn't an angry detective yelling at me, beads of sweat were not pouring from my brow, and no one was pounding on any desks). I don't want to get into a load of details, but suffice it to say, the environment was heavily controlled to eliminate external stimuli, the questions and their meanings along with the terms and their definitions were all explained in detail to me in advance, I was able to voice any misgivings I had about them to the examiner (in fact, we spent 2.5 hours of the 4 hours doing just that, since my inherent pedantry meant that I had all sorts of ideas like "well, technically I've compromised government systems when I lent a friend my password at our state university" or "I can't rule out the possibility that I unknowingly supported terrorists through a front that they're maintaining", which led to a lot of the questions getting rephrased to be prefixed by "insofar as you know" or "besides what you have disclosed here"), and the questions were all read to me over and over and over again in even, metered tones that were about as un-aggressive as you can imagine.
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Oh, and it should go without saying that I do not work there, otherwise I obviously wouldn't be discussing any of this. The job I found as a hold-me-over position until I was done with the CIA application process actually ended up blowing me completely out of the water, so when the CIA asked me to move forward with the application process, I let them know I had found something else and was no longer interested.
And keep in mind that all of this was well before Snowden's revelations.
In fact, for the writing s
Re:My personal experience (Score:4, Informative)
Was this new job as a professional Tone Troll? When the state has made legal whisteblowing impossible, the only way to reveal government lawbreaking is "illegally". Manning didn't exactly have his own staff to go over documents, but WikiLeaks did, going out of their way to as the USG for help with reactions.
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Insightful)
So basically the FBI is only hiring people over the age of 50?
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Funny)
Over 50 and straight edged boy scout
I'm over 50 and used to be a boy scout. I don't smoke, drink very moderately, help little old ladies across the street, recently came to the assistance of a young woman who was in a physical altercation with her boyfriend (which turned out to be her attacking him, but I didn't know that 'til I got involved) and just today used my pocket knife (which I carry because I was a boy scout) to help an elderly man deflate a beach ball he and his grandson had been playing with (by prying out the extremely stuck plug, not stabbing it.)
And I illegally downloaded a movie last night (there were extenuating circumstances, but still...)
So I'd say the FBI is going to be restricted to Amish who were too wasted during their rumspringa to download anything.
Re:Ok, but (Score:4, Funny)
I have just reported your admission of copyright infringement to the FBI. Enjoy federal prison.
Re: (Score:3)
To: Anonymous Coward
Thank you for your report. Rest assured, crimes with a Biden Index of 1.0 will be investigated and prosecuted thoroughly.
P.S. we're hiring! Please send us your resume.
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Just means the FBI will only be hiring people who are good at lying about wrongdoing. Which is probably really more useful and what they want in the long run.
Re:Ok, but (Score:4, Insightful)
But it's not what they want. You know what the word is for "guy who can blithely lie his way through a polygraph?" It's "spy."
Polygraphs are pseudoscientific bullshit, but the only people they weed out are the honest ones. I know you're worried about abusive/sociopathic cops, and that's one problem. But if I if I can switch to Fedspeak, for a moment - the risk isn't that the FBI's recruitment policies select for sociopaths, it's that they select for double agents. Moronic ideologue non-threats like AQ/IS and domestic terrorists like the Sovereign Citizen derpers might not make it past this screening, but they're practically begging FSB and PLA to infiltrate them. It's assinine, it's self-destructive, and it doesn't even serve the larger gains of the FBI, just of the bureaucrats who have a vested interest in the revolving door between the IC and polygraph-reliant clearance-processing industry.
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eh, even spies are OK, as long as they don't get caught. Or if they do get caught, the FBI isn't blamed for letting them in. It's government. The most important tenet is CYA. It's valuable to have people who can convince others that they've done everything right "by the book" and have done no wrong.
Re:Ok, but (Score:4, Funny)
But it's not what they want. You know what the word is for "guy who can blithely lie his way through a polygraph?" It's "spy."
Polygraphs are pseudoscientific bullshit, but the only people they weed out are the honest ones. I know you're worried about abusive/sociopathic cops, and that's one problem. But if I if I can switch to Fedspeak, for a moment - the risk isn't that the FBI's recruitment policies select for sociopaths, it's that they select for double agents. Moronic ideologue non-threats like AQ/IS and domestic terrorists like the Sovereign Citizen derpers might not make it past this screening, but they're practically begging FSB and PLA to infiltrate them. It's assinine, it's self-destructive, and it doesn't even serve the larger gains of the FBI, just of the bureaucrats who have a vested interest in the revolving door between the IC and polygraph-reliant clearance-processing industry.
Likewise, they are insuring their agents are clueless socially broken idiots who are also sanctimonious twatwaffles about it.
Which makes them neither effective nor able to get the best and brightest. From what I have observed about the next generation of folks entering college about now, they will nave ZERO chance of hiring anybody in that age group. It'll be easy to identify the FBI undercover guy, he'll be the one with the walker and the gray hair.
Re: Ok, but (Score:3)
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Yeah right. They are looking for only one answer, and if you want to stay married long you had better answer correctly.
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Funny)
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Federal Bureau of Ignorants
They may still hire you (Score:5, Insightful)
Then they won't hire you.
They may hire you if you did something illegal and are honest about it. They will not hire you if you did something illegal and lied about it.
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right.
you're only allowed to do illegal things and lie about it AFTER you are hired by the fbi.
does anyone seriously believe that 'law enforcement' is about fighting the good fight and standing up for what is right, anymore?
I have lost 101% confidence in our system's ability to do what's Right(tm). it seems only the stupid or brainwashed would want to work for the government goons.
and of course, goons is basically what they have, now, anyway.
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Re:Ok, but (Score:5, Informative)
they will probably hire you. it's like a military security clearance. they don't like it when you lie to them, but they are OK if you admit wrongdoing.
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they will probably hire you. it's like a military security clearance. they don't like it when you lie to them, but they are OK if you admit wrongdoing.
Except that admitting a crime to your military security clearance interviewer is different than admitting a crime to the FBI, they being law enforcement. I wouldn't volunteer that you smoked pot, either.
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The law of munchiesdynamics?
Re: Ok, but (Score:4, Insightful)
The law of "don't talk to cops about anything".
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you're in America and an American citizen, and you say you smoked pot last week, you've most certainly broken the law. You could be arrested instantly. You've just confessed to a crime.
American law doesn't care if you were in another country where its legal to smoke pot when you did it last week, America still considers that to be an offense and you did break they law. We hold you not just to our own laws when you are hear, but also when you are else where, and you are also held to the laws of the cou
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I downloaded a TV show that was on Canadian and did not show up on US till about 1 year later.
yes, they people who follow the law/ rules (Score:5, Insightful)
> Of course, if all they want are upper middle-class drones who follow every rule that has ever been made, just because it's a rule, then I suppose this is effective.
You can drop the "upper middle class" part, as this is about following the law. Full stop.
The FBI and especially the intelligence services will tell you that they very much try to hire people who follow the law and other rules. In some cases, being sloppy about following the rules can have huge consequences. So they lool for military people and people from certain social groups who culturally tend to follow the rules.
The irony of that is obvious.
As to "just because they are rules" -
Not that we need to debate it, and you'll probably never give up your excuse for taking stuff without paying for it, but my family and coworkers have been greatly harmed by the seachange shift to a culture of most people taking what they want illegally rather than paying the 99 cents to buy it from those of us who create it. The rule that what I create with my own hands os mine to give away, trade, or sell exists for a very good reason. Yes, it does mean that app or song I spent a year working on will cost you a whopping $1, but that's just how it is. (Coming from a guy whose daughter would be MUCH better taken care of if everyone who uses my software regularly had paid a dollar for it. Buying another candy bar is more important than doing the right thing, though. )
Re:yes, they people who follow the law/ rules (Score:5, Insightful)
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. The rule that what I create with my own hands os mine to give away, trade, or sell exists for a very good reason.
And what's that reason? Not everyone agrees about imaginary property Ray. The concept is rather new. You're free to disagree, but the world is changing and as information is so easy to copy fewer and fewer people are seeing things your way. I don't really know anyone that really thinks you're a criminal if you share a TV show with your friend for instance. TV is already valued at approxima
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I see Ray. Interesting that you can't respond to my argument and have to resort to critiquing a spelling error.
yes, in the past sometimes, and no (Score:3)
> Most piracy does not represent lost sales, but sales that never would have happened.
That's true, based on my knowledge of tens of thousands of content producers over the last fifteen years. That is, however, irrelevant to their take home pay. Suppose that 90% of piracy is cases that would not have purchased. The other 10% is people who would have - the producers income stream. What matters is that people who used to buy no longer do, the pirate/steal. People who used to buy one album per year n
thank you, Netflix and Red Box , $1 mp3 (Score:3)
Thank you for doing the right thing.
I don't like some of the things the MPAA and RIAA have done. I do like Pulp Fiction and I Like Big Butts. The song, not the butts. I want Hollywood to make more big movies with Samuel L Jackson, and I don't want to get ripped off. What to do? I think the Netflix/ Hulu / Amazon Prime model along with the Red Box model can fund big movies and also provide good value to the consumer. So my message to Hollywood is this - of you want my money, you'll have to get it
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The 1500 you deleted don't matter. The 30 you kept and enjoy on a regular basis are the ones you would have paid for ten years ago, and you're ripping off the artist, the editor, the producer, the guitar tuner, the studio tech, and the studio musicians when you don't throw in your $1 for that song you keep because they brought you joy through their hard work.
When an album was $15, it could be hard to fork over $15 to get mainly one song you wanted, with ten others thrown in. Now that it takes one click to
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How much money did I take from the RIAA and MPAA by downloading?