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Low grade corruption ...and here's why: The FBI is understaffed, misdirected & underfunded for its real mission, which I would argue must be fighting public co
by howmayiannoyyou 4y ago
Low grade corruption ...and here's why:
The FBI is understaffed, misdirected & underfunded for its real mission, which I would argue must be fighting public corruption, organized crime and counter-espionage. Any objective analysis would conclude the Bureau has been politicized and its resources have been directed at operations, investigations and training that does not fulfill its core mission.
The bad PR and mistrust the FBI has earned in recent years is the public product of what I'm describing, and the solution is not mobile apps of marginal utility made to make the Bureau look good. No, the solution is arrests of corrupt politicians, crime bosses & spies.
Its not just the FBI suffering from feel/look good boondoggles. The Air Force struggles with hypersonics but excels at new uniform design. The DOT is a leader in equity & diversity, but has failed to upgrade & regulate rail infrastructure & procedures that make derailments a regular occurrence.
Tax revenues have been their highest in decades, possibly longer. We deserve better.
- tyleo 4y agoI think you are reading a lot into the development of an app. For anything the government does it seems like folks are ready to pop out and say, “the resources would be better spent on X.” Maybe true but I’d argue doing slightly wrong things is better than listening to the orchestra of naysayers and doing nothing.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 4y agoI know it goes against majority of what people think on the subject, but sometimes doing nothing is the absolute best thing to do. Doing something badly at best can keep things as is; not to mention the worst case scenarios.
- Silica6149 4y agoWhy does the FBI have to develop an app, though? Shouldn't they focus on what they're good at and able to do, like investigating crimes?
- ejb999 4y agocouldn't agree more - the things the FBI choses to spend time and money on are mind boggling; most egregious that comes to mind was all the wasted time and resources tracking down and recovering Tom Brady's jersey in Mexico - I don't care how much it was worth, Tom Brady or the Patriots each have hundreds of millions of dollars available to them if they wanted to track it down with their own money.
- Cyph0n 4y agoWow, that is the kind of story you’d expect to see on SNL.
- giantg2 4y agoWhat you're describing isn't necessarily corruption. It sounds more like incompetence paired with worrying more about appearances than actual results.
- CrazyPyroLinux 4y agoThe banality of evil.
- Dracophoenix 4y agoThe FBI has seized assets through civil forfeiture for decades. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-09/fbi-beverly-hills-safe-deposit-boxes-forfeiture-cash-jewelry https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-06-09/fbi-beve... That's not "low grade" corruption. It's the plainest form of corruption conducted en masse and in a highly organized fashion. When an arm of the government can take your property without due process, any suspicion towards them is warranted. With regards to this new app, I wouldn't be surprised if this becomes a way to tap into every phone in the country.
- bun_at_work 4y agoSurely the FBI doesn't need this app that only appeals to people with children to tap every phone in the country.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoCase and point: I get Amber alerts on my phone.
- beeboop 4y agoThe simplest explanation for this really crappy, worthless app is that someone with budget wanted to give some overpriced FBI contract to a friend. I'm sure the FBI paid millions for this app when some college kid could do the same thing in a week.
- MarkMarine 4y agoThe FBI and other 3 letter agencies have been vacuuming up every communication between us, warrantless, for so many years it’s crazy. That unconstitutional overreach has been used to do what exactly? No I really want to know. It’s not keeping us safe, because someone who is basically a cartoon caricature of a school shooter can scare everyone they come in contact with, get a long gun and ammo, and execute a mass shooting, but somehow the panopticon keeps missing it. If we’re not giving up our rights for safety, what are we giving them up for? Cause we have neither.
- davidro80 4y ago
- pwython 4y ago> "That unconstitutional overreach has been used to do what exactly? No I really want to know. It’s not keeping us safe..." Unpopular opinion, but you know the old saying: No one hears about the times the FBI, CIA, etc has stopped a terrorist act, you only hear about the disasters that eventually played out. For every one sick person that went on to do something crazy, hundreds have been caught before anything happened. I don't understand the upset for "warrantless wire-tapping" unless you have something to hide, especially when these days people are begging the government to protect us from extremists/terrorists and not sit on their hands.
- throwaway0a5e 4y ago>For every one sick person that went on to do something crazy, hundreds have been caught before anything happened. If their dragnets had even a shred of utility for that purpose they'd be telling you about it at every opportunity.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- pwython 4y agoThey do put it out there. But what makes headlines that people actually see? "500 murdered in a terrorist attack" versus: "We caught some bad guys" [who potentially could've killed more]
- xnyan 4y ago>new uniform design From unflattering dress blues to incredibly uncomfortably and noisy (yes, noisy as in creates loud sounds) workout clothes, Air Force uniform design is terrible in my experience and subjectively seems to be the worst of all the services (I was always envious of Navy PT gear, looked a lot better than ours).
- maxwell 4y ago> its real mission The FBI's primary objective in practice seems to have always been "maintaining the existing social and political order" [1], with some swaying justification of national security and preventing violence, corruption, espionage, terrorism, cyber attacks, and other vague, broad, non-specific, topical threats. 1. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/94755_III.pdf https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/9475... > mistrust the FBI has earned in recent years Do you consider COINTELPRO–BLACK HATE recent? https://archive.org/details/FBI-COINTELPRO-BLACK/100-HQ-448006-01/page/n5/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/FBI-COINTELPRO-BLACK/100-HQ-4480...
- AndyMcConachie 4y agoI've read letters from NKVD agents located in the USA in the 1930s talking about how this new guy J Edgar Hoover is using political blackmail so effectively. They were reporting back to the USSR telling their superiors how political blackmail was something that the new USSR needed to perfect and use to its advantage. I think we can have a long discussion about what the real purpose of the FBI is. And I bet even within the FBI they can have this long discussion. It is many purposed, some of which we may determine to be pro-social, or pro-democratic. While others are probably more anti-social and anti-democratic.
- thrown_22 4y agoThe first FBI director had Washington by the balls for forty years. Nixon didn't fire him because he expected him to retaliate with blackmail, neither did Truman or Kennedy. The FBI is working as intended.
- arminiusreturns 4y agoWhen one learns about who controlled him and how they are on the road to real understanding of the FBI in history. (Hint: Trumps former mentor was involved!) Unfortunately, in my analysis of the various 3-letters, they are so compartmentalized that the top-down corruption is not seen by the generally good intentioned middle and lower men. So the bureaucratic momentum keeps the agencies preserved when in reality they are often the most egregious violators of the constitution and need to be reigned in. https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epstein-blackmail-roy-cohn/260621/ https://www.mintpressnews.com/shocking-origins-jeffrey-epste... "The connections Roy Cohn built during the 1950s made him a well-known public figure and translated into great political influence that peaked during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. Yet, as Cohn built his public image, he was also developing a dark private life, which would come to be dominated by the same blackmail pedophile racket that appears to have first begun with Lewis Rosenstiel. One of the “blackmail parties” Susan Kaufman attended with her then-husband Lewis Rosenstiel was hosted by Cohn in 1958 at Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel, suite 233. Kaufman described Cohn’s suite as a “beautiful suite…all done in light blue.” She described being introduced to Hoover, who was in drag, by Cohn, who told her that Hoover’s name was “Mary” in a fit of barely concealed laughter. Kaufman testified that young boys were present and Kaufman claimed that Cohn, Hoover and her ex-husband engaged in sexual activity with these minors. New York attorney John Klotz, tasked with investigating Cohn for a case well after Kaufman’s testimony, also found evidence of the “blue suite” at the Plaza Hotel and its role in a sex extortion ring after combing through local government documents and information gathered by private detectives. Klotz later told journalist and author Burton Hersh what he had learned: Roy Cohn was providing protection. There were a bunch of pedophiles involved. That’s where Cohn got his power from — blackmail.” Perhaps the most damning confirmation of Cohn’s activities in Suite 233 comes from statements made by Cohn himself to former NYPD detective and ex-head of the department’s Human-Trafficking and Vice-Related Crimes Division, James Rothstein. Rothstein later told John DeCamp — a former Nebraska state senator who investigated a government-connected child sex ring based in Omaha — among other investigators, that Cohn had admitted to being part of a sexual blackmail operation targeting politicians with child prostitutes during a sit-down interview with the former detective. Rothstein told DeCamp the following about Cohn: Cohn’s job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn’s job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself.” Rothstein later told Paul David Collins, a former journalist turned researcher, that Cohn had also identified this sexual blackmail operation as being part of the anti-communist crusade of the time. The fact that Cohn, per Rothstein’s recollection, stated that the child sex blackmail ring was part of the government-sponsored anti-communist crusade suggests that elements of the government, including Hoover’s FBI, may have been connected at a much broader level than Hoover’s own personal involvement, as the FBI closely coordinated with McCarthy and Cohn for much of the red scare."