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"We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area." Wow, no wonder government agencies
by saganus 10y ago
"We traced the glasses to your son from the prescription by examining the files of all optometrists in the San Diego area."
Wow, no wonder government agencies salivate at the idea of being able to monitor the whole Interwebs.
I know they now have orders of magnitude more data to process but still... that manual process must have been expensive and boring as hell.
I guess as an agent you would need to convince yourself that this was actually a very important task of defending your country or something. Otherwise I can imagine going crazy just doing this stuff for nothing...
Edit:
Another quote I found amusing:
"The friendlier one eventually described how much it had cost to investigate another recent case where a person was reported to have pulled down an American flag and stepped on it. Only after the investigation was well under way did they learn that the perpetrator of this nefarious act was only four years old."
- ziikutv 10y agoWhy the hell didn't they contact street car company and ask if someone was looking for them?
- colanderman 10y agoPresumably said "spy" would presume that the code was found, and thus useless for them to retrieve, thus making the risk of discovery outweigh any benefit of retrieval. So the "spy" almost certainly wouldn't show up, and now they've been tipped off that the code may be compromised and the FBI may have become involved exactly in the manner they did.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ziikutv 10y agoI mean them asking the car company would have Eliminated that. It is the first rational choice anyone would make.
- josu 10y agoMost of the times starting with the wrong premise is worse than starting with no premise at all.
- H4CK3RM4N 10y agoBut now governments can prosecute as soon as they know the act was committed(and have an identity to link it to). I don't think they'd even need to see the age of the child.
- throwaway91111 10y agoWait, they actually green lit a case about stepping on a flag? To what end? Does the FBI realize how many open missing persons cases there are? This whole quote is nauseous.
- weingsoftime 10y agoImagine the media storm if someone who is flag-stomping turns out to engage in terrorism. "FBI ignores a flag-stomping terrorist in plain sight" Then you'll realize why they do this.
- dreamcompiler 10y agoIt was in the middle of WWII. The FBI's zeal was pretty high at that time.
- Cyph0n 10y agoIt was a tense time, so I can understand why such acts would be flagged (pun not intended).
- glubGlub 10y agoMy hypothesis is that the FBI knows some of its agents are useless, and keeps some busywork lying around to occupy them on slow news days. I've had passive/aggressive managers saddle me with nonsense before, and sometimes they were just in a mood but if a pattern develops, it's because they can't find a way to fire you. But, goodness gracious! Toying with people's lives, investigating random nobodies as if they might be criminals, as a side effect of interpersonal difficulties in the workplace? It's more likely than you think.
- briandear 10y agoJust to be really clear since it seems some are missing the point -- this was around 70 years ago during World War II.
- 10y ago
- mnm1 10y agoA hateful heart has helped many an FBI agent in such tasks. Never underestimate the power of hate. The FBI was practically built on it.