The FBI Spent Two Years Investigating An Online Cult That Didn't Exist (muckrock.com) 134
A two-year FBI investigation apparently centered on the satirical web site "GodHatesGoths". Long-time Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes:
In 2005, the FBI launched an investigation into the "Church of the Hammer," a fundamentalist Christian sect which called for the wholesale slaughter of practitioners of the goth subculture. Two years later, the investigation was closed, on grounds that the Church didn't exist.
The FBI's threat assessment detailed "an extremely right-wing Christian group that adheres to a Middle Ages Catholic text called the 'Malleus Malificarum.'" But MuckRock.com reports that "The Bureau's main source on the case was a goth who had engaged with members of the Church via their Yahoo Group...trying to dispel their misconceptions about the relationship between the subculture and Satanism." After two years of scouring through crime databases and making phone calls to the Salem police department, FBI investigators actually visited the GodHatesGoths web site -- which turned out to be a parody.
a successful parody (Score:3)
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can i get a tax refund on that then, please, after all i paid for
Re:ALL government agencies are badly managed. (Score:2)
Fixed that title for ya.
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Is incompetent.
No, they're CORRUPT.
As in "no reasonable prosecutor" BULLSHIT to let Crooked Liar Felon Hillary! off.
No. (Score:1)
They're BOTH. Why does it have to be one or the other?
Re: The FBI (Score:2, Insightful)
So what you're saying is, the FBI is in like, the sweet spot of corruption, where they're corrupt enough to not prosecute her, but not corrupt enough to have not investigated in the first place? How convenient.
And what about prosecuting Crooked Asshole Trump? Hate speech, death threats, conspiracy to commit crimes, fraud, tax evasion... just when you think the man couldn't get any more stupid, racist or misogynist, he opens his mouth again... Or a recording surfaces of him opening his mouth in the past... B
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Comey clearly dislike some of the things Clinton did, but the mail server investigation did not turn up sufficient evidence to prosecute. Clinton had clearly been negligent with classified materials, but I found no examples of such negligence involving criminal prosecution.
As far as Trump goes, I believe his fraud trial starts later this month. This is being done properly, in that the case is not publicized before the election.
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They let Rove, Cheney, and the RNC get away with all kinds of things like running a private mail server, leaking classified information to the press, facilitating bribery, etc. Were they corrupt then?
Re:The FBI (Score:5, Insightful)
The Obama administration is one of the LEAST corrupt and MOST competent in American history.
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Sigh. The President directs the use of vast but limited resources, and this includes which laws to emphasize for investigation and prosecution. There's nothing criminal about it.
The President can negotiate all he or she wants. A treaty isn't the law of the land until the Senate vote.
The Iran negotiation was to get something out of a deteriorating diplomatic situation, and in my judgment is more likely to keep Iran from getting a nuke than continued US sanctions. It isn't treason. It could be a mis
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I've never had problems with my HMO. I have to see my primary doctor for referrals or pay Tier 3 rates, but I can see him fast, frequently the next day, and I've never had a referral I though indicated turned down. I've been having some health issues, and not having to worry about insurance has been a real help. (I belong to Healthpartners in Minnesota.)
Perhaps the FBI should investigate real cults (Score:2, Interesting)
This is a Catholic text about witchcraft, after all. What better cult to investigate than Catholicism? If the leader of a cult like FLDS molest children, he rightly ends up on a most wanted list and eventually in prison. Warren Jeffs absolutely belongs in prison and all forms of LDS are creepy cults. But Catholicism seems to get a free pass, where clergy molest children and then are shielded by bishops or even by the Vatican. The clergy are shuffled around while allegations by victims are hushed. If the all
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This may well be MOD'd as off-topic - BUT
Eliminating any religion / cult / whatever does nothing effective to remove their influence, it merely drives them underground.
Try this on for size - TAX the churches. It doesn't have to be much - say 10% of their 'take' as a reasonable start, since that is the same amount that the churches want in tithes. Imagine the benefit to society as a whole from this enormous wealth redistribution.
As a side benefit to society, there would be fewer 'churches' scheming for chur
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You don't have to do ANYTHING special. Simply allow whatever church to follow any existing tax law that isn't church specific.
You'd think that most churches would fit just fine under existing not-for-profit organization types, except, of course, for the fact that religions tend to be very explicitly for-profit.
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That's a vampire cannibalism cult, not just a vampire cult. I don't think it's really a zombie cult, as it claims return to life rather than undeath.
Next (Score:2)
Next, pastafarians and the church of the flying spaghetti monster.
Re:Next (Score:4, Insightful)
They can't investigate a legitimate religion
Define legitimate religion...
Re:Next (Score:4, Insightful)
Define legitimate religion...
One that the speaker is a member.
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I'm free and unarmed. That's one of the benefits of modern society.
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How's that for a start?
The equivalent of renaming dog to God should not be enough to evade the law and scam people via a loophole.
That's the low hanging fruit. Cults are more difficult. The early history of the Mormons and some of the evangelical groups makes it a bit difficult to show that new cults are not just there for the benefit of their leaders. There's a bunch in evangelical Christian guise near me that started
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Just because you didn't see the obvious or understand the rest is no reason to act as if I had a background like Glenn Beck.
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I think we can at least require that the religion's tenets be sincerely held by members and leaders alike. (In general; if some individuals disbelieve that needn't deligitimize the entire religion.)
This implies that the members and leaders share the same tenets and generally means those tenets are publicly known, not secret.
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generally means those tenets are publicly known, not secret.
Church of Scientology
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is not a legitimate religion, yes.
Re:Next (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't investigate a legitimate religion
Define legitimate religion...
A religion is a large, popular cult. A cult is a small, unpopular religion.
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No, a cult is any secretive practice. A religion is open about what they believe.
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Roman Catholic - most of Vatican and Vatican archives are secret and off limits to the general public
Scientology - most of their buildings and practices are not open to the public
Jewish - parts of synagogues are not open to the public & maybe not even to their women
Mormon - Interior of their temples and higher level rituals are off limits to the public
Muslim - some sacred sites and interiors of Mosques are off limits to the public
Global Warming - In public claim it is about the environment when in priva
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The Vatican having some secrets doesn't negate the fact that every significant doctrine of Catholicism is public knowledge.
Likewise, the inaccessibility of some parts of some synagogues and holy sites doesn't negate the fact that every significant doctrine of Judaism and Islam is public knowledge.
Quite a big difference from Scientology and other cults where a lot of information about what the leaders believe is deliberately held back from potential converts.
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> Quite a big difference from Scientology and other cults where a lot of information about what the leaders believe is deliberately held back from potential converts.
Not really. Information forms belief. There's a collection of books kept in the Popes own apartment that only Popes are ever allowed to see. There's tons of stuff that the Vatican actually does that is completely contrary to Christian doctrine.
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Funny. I've been in dozens of different synagogues. I've never seen an area blocked off for religious reasons. (Locking up the Rabbi's office is just common sense.)
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Legitimate religions are the ones with either enough adherents or enough money to get enough legislators in their pocket.
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The IRS is likely to investigate a church if they engage in political activity, such as recommending a candidate or political party. It's constitutional.
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As I suspected this is an FBI hit piece, related to the election.
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I'd say to send some cruise missiles,
I prefer the idea of strapping Tom Cruise to a missile - no matter what the target, as long as it's launched.
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...they can't Mecca no more.
A blatantly-obvious setup-and-pun joke gets a '-1' on Slashdot over some PC oversensitivity?
I can see why comedians like Seinfeld won't tour colleges anymore.
Strat
Perhaps not time wasted (Score:1)
Perhaps this isn't wasted time.
Any time spent on this activity was time that was not available for activities such as persecuting people like Aaron Swartz.
The FBI has been a corrupt organization since its founding. Any real criminals caught by the FBI are perhaps an aberration rather than the FBI performing its primary mission.
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Not so surprising (Score:2)
They also investigated the Kingsmen's Louie Louie for 31 months for obscenity before deciding the lyrics were indecipherable.
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The FBI called me up asking about some website I had visited, thinking that it was related to Columbine. It turned out, they were investigating a website related to the tabletop RPG "Teenagers from Outer Space," which apparently the Columbine kids played and wrote about in one of their journals.
In between gales of laughter, I told the agent that if he had any more leads on threats from role playing games that he should feel free to give me a call and I'd be happy to help out as best I could.
It wasn't so funny when they actually raided Steve Jackson Games when they were making a hacking-themed game. I wonder about the FBI - surely a portion of them are actually savvy about this sort of thing. Is it just some institutional bias against asking fellow agents who might be familiar with the subject at hand?
The church switched to a for-profit model (Score:2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Spirit Cooking (Score:1, Informative)
This article has been posted to discredit the FBI, the revelation of the Democratic party's "Spirit Cooking" scandal, and the Clinton corruption investigations.
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But aren't they?
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Your post was was written to discredit Trump voters as bunch of whackadoodle conspiracy theorists.
Conspiracy theory: Straight out of the horses mouth with a paper trail, author, and events to go with it.
In other news, channers were running around screaming "We love you Christ-chan" and "deus vult." FBI currently investigating all the way back to the 11th century for leads.
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The woman who invited Podesta to the spirit dinner is offering twitter follows if you just post her "666" hastag. https://twitter.com/AbramovicM... [twitter.com] Rich people are often extremely freaky. It doesn't take a conspiracist to point that out. I'm not going to vote these kind of freakitude back into power.
And I thought this whole thing was a typo, they really meant "Spirited cooking"
I'm not sure I mind this (Score:5, Insightful)
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Right, someone at FBI quickly threw some info into a document and tossed it aside for two years. Someone finally picked it up, looked into it, noticed it was bunk, and closed it. Whooptydoo.
This. Anyone who is reassured by this is a dumbass because we have learned that 1) the FBI will open a file without any legitimate provocation and 2) the FBI leaves these bullshit files open for years without addressing them, meaning that legitimate hate groups can hide in the noise.
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a "2 year investigation" could easily just be somebody at the FBI keeping tabs on them to make sure it really is just harmless trolling.
It could also be a spare time project that no one got to. One of those open investigations that ended up on the bottom of the pile in a last in first out approach. Then someone finally had a second to get to, it open it up, have a laugh, and close the case.
I'm not sure you used your mind (Score:1)
If you (and I suspect, many of the people who gave you karma) had actually read the article, which contains excerpts from files of the investigation, you would know that it was not the FBI keeping tabs on anyone, it was a "threat assessment". From one of those files: "Writer could not locate via open sources (Internet, [etc]) any information to substantiate the existence of Rev. Green or the church." From a subsequent file dated 2 years (I think muckrock typoed the year) after the writer was assigned to it:
I'm not sure you used your mind (Score:1)
If you (and I suspect, many of the people who gave you karma) had actually read the article, which contains excerpts from files of the investigation, you would know that it was not the FBI keeping tabs on anyone, it was a "threat assessment". From one of those files: "Writer could not locate via open sources (Internet, [etc]) any information to substantiate the existence of Rev. Green or the church." From a subsequent file dated [b]2 years[/b] (I think muckrock typoed the year) after the writer was assigned
The have quite the track record ... (Score:2)
... of investigating none existing crimes.
Just saying.
./ supporting conspiracy theories now (Score:2)
A vast right wing Russian, KGB/FSB, FBI conspiracy to steal the election from Clinton.
Good thing there is 3 days to go.
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lol I think you need put that doobey down now.
Comeyites (Score:2)
Oh join me fellow Comeyites, to give the iPhone a holy back door like God has asked of his followers, per Galatians 8:12. For God needeth space ships and God needeth back doors.
No clue, no sense of humour (Score:2)
Yup, just the FBI honouring its founder - looking for monsters under beds and, when they don't find any, trying to create them. Helluva make-work project.
I Feel Much Safer Now (Score:2)
Don't publish this too much further - the FBI is already embarrassed by/about the Clinton investigation.
Revealing this would make them laughingstocks of law enforcement for a decade to come.
Not the first time (Score:2)
Back in the late 80s or mid 90s, I forget exactly when, police and the FBI spent years assembling a massive chart of where, when, and how Satanists met, stole, and ate human babies. Guess what: that never happened either. And that whole thing was pre-Internet-as-we-know-it. They had to come up with that shit based on verbal rumor and wishful thinking.
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There was even that agent, in the 90s who was specifically assigned to look into the cases that were obviously reported by crazy people. A lot of people thought it was pretty wasteful of the FBI, but I think it was one rare point of government efficiency. Have one guy deal with all of the crazy bullshit, and let the rest of the agents do the REAL investigating... Oh, and have him take that mouthy redhead from the morgue with him!
Fan Belt Inspectors (Score:1)
There's a reason the local police often have nicknames like the above for the FBI, and it isn't all jurisdictional jealousy...
Next Up (Score:2)
Diverting FBI from their regular work (Score:1)
Took two years? (Score:1)
Either they were real thorough or they're really slow.
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IDIOT
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>Hillary fed the FBI tons of false leads so they wouldnt notice her corrupt deals.
Fortunately, an email by a tech saying he was part of the Clinton coverup operation was ruled a joke by the FBI.
(http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user230519/imageroot/2016/09/24/20160924%20-%20Hillary%20Coverup%20Operation.jpg)
I wonder why it took them so little time to decide that was a joke, but took two years on these guys.
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I'd honestly doubt many man hours were spent on this. Probably just forgotten till someone noticed. They check the site see its fake and close it. The only reason we are hearing about this is because of the whole #SpiritCooking thing. Plus this author has just been submitting muckrock.com links for 2 years dozens and dozens. Not sure if human or bot to be honest.
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Mr Thiel, this is not the time nor place.
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The song to google is "True Story"
Harmless historical nuts
Who wear boiler plate on their butts
Who dress up in clothes from the twelfth century
To bash on each other with sticks and debris
And make up the world's largest private army
Harmless historical nuts