7 ms·

I can only imagine the people running these organizations share the perspective of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk

• hermitdev 4y ago
  I think part of the problem is the apparent lack of accountability for violations. I mean, what were the repercussions for any of the violations the OIG found? Careers need to be ended and people sent to jail over this. This is a civil rights violation en masse and needs to be treated as such. There should be no exceptions; a warrant should be required per the 4th amendment.
  • vasco 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • surge 4y ago
      Some people are on TikTok so everyone forfeited their privacy?
  • claytongulick 4y ago
    While I definitely sympathize with your sentiment, TFA is mostly about how confusing and inconsistent the laws are. According to the article, Ron Wyden and several others tried to pass a bill to clarify the guidelines, but it didn't make it out of committee. Perhaps we should write good, clear laws and guidelines before we break out the pitchforks. I may be naive, but I still believe that most law enforcement officers want to do the right thing, and dedicate their lives to helping others. Of course egregious violations should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • tsimionescu 4y ago
      > I may be naive, but I still believe that most law enforcement officers want to do the right thing, and dedicate their lives to helping others. That is extremely naive, especially when talking about these sorts of federal entities.
      • l33t233372 4y ago
        Can you elaborate? What do you think most law enforcement officers want to do, and what do you think being federal changes about it?
        • zmgsabst 4y ago
          “A few rotten apples spoil the bunch” as the saying goes. Due to never facing consequences for illegal actions, a culture of flouting the law and abusing rights has been normalized — for both federal and other agencies. The few “bad apples” rotted their organizations.
        • miguelazo 4y ago
          >What do you think most law enforcement officers want to do Get paid large salaries and good benefits without having to go to college, in a country that doesn't respect the trades enough. And plenty of them like the power, especially the "bad apples."
      • supportlocal4h 4y ago
        It can be true and still be problematic. If a small city has 100 LEO, and 15 are bad apples, the overwhelming majority still want to do the right thing. Unfortunately 15 is still a very big problem. If they can break the law with impunity it can rightly be said that the police force is doing more harm than good. Even outnumbered 6:1 the bad apples have a larger effect on the community. Unless the 85 good apples focus their attention specifically on the 15 above all other crime. If they enforce the law against the 15 until the problem goes away, or until the ratio is 30:1 and it is really hard for the 3 bad apples to collude... well then maybe. No organization is perfect. But the rule enforcers have to be held to a higher standard.
  • KennyBlanken 4y ago
    Remember, we have a supreme court that recently decided sniffer dogs are acceptable grounds for searches, despite them being worse than a coin flip. Our court system doesn't care about "fair." It cares about punishing.
    • 8note 4y ago
      It's likely that there's no law saying that the tools for "acceptable grounds for search" have to on average increase the probability of finding something The courts are doing they're job wrt the law
      • claytongulick 4y ago
        @dang I'm not sure what the correct approach is to ask about this - my comment on this thread was flagged. I believe flagging it was inappropriate, as there wasn't any rule violation, just perhaps an opinion that is unpopular (support for law enforcement officers). I don't mind being downvoted for comments that are unpopular, but I think inappropriate flagging is harmful. What redress is there?
        • nsajko 4y ago
          I'm guessing users flagged your comment, not mods. The redress is for other users to "vouch" for your comment, as I have done right now. For contacting Dang, see the "Contact" link at the bottom of the front page.
      • paulryanrogers 4y ago
        If dogs are on average worse than a coin flip, than just stopping people randomly (with a coin/dice) would be more honest, fair, and cheaper.
• moremetadata 4y ago
  > They believe they are the law, not that they're subservient to it. The public would be shocked at the level of criminality within the state, not satisfied with making up the law as they go along to suit their needs, they even go and break it.
• _8j50 4y ago
  You give them too much credit. Thinking you are the law means you give a shit about justice. These people have quotas to meet and promotions to get and bosses to please. Violating your rights is just one mean to an end. A law that isn't enforced is cheaper than the paper it is written on.
  • ryandrake 4y ago
    I think for a lot of them, especially the LE agents that come from a military background, the A Few Good Men reference actually applies. They really think we are in this endless war, and that they are patriotically defending their country from hand-wavey "enemies." If that's true, the ends justify any means, up to and including breaking the law. The law written by non-warrior civilians--what do they know about these dangers lurking around every corner? This perpetual-warrior mindset is evidently pervasive throughout law enforcement and other branches of government.
    • _8j50 4y ago
      You are right about them using the "perpetual warrior" thing, I think that to most of them it is just a mask they wear to not feel or look like the bad guys as opposed to that being their motivation.
• mindslight 4y ago
  I once heard a park ranger literally say "I am the law" while telling a story to a random visitor about how she had her sister with dogs come live with her, even though dogs were prohibited in the park (or something like that). This isn't to impugn park rangers in general nor the fantastic national park system, just a datapoint about how warped people's viewpoints can get with even an inkling of power. The whole concept of sovereign immunity needs to be massively neutered, especially as extended to individuals employed by the state rather than the state itself.
  • dylan604 4y ago
    There's a reason Cartman's "Respect my authority" bit is so good. These types of roles are especially attractive to a particular personality type. There are jobs where it is best to have people that do not want to be in that position vs having people seeking to be that position.
    • projektfu 4y ago
      I see that even in my condo's HOA board. There are three types - those that are lurkers but will vote occasionally, those that do not really want to be there, but they feel they are qualified and it's their duty to do the work, and those who want to exercise power and exempt themselves from the declaration/by-laws as much as possible. You need at least one of the second to balance one of the third.
• bladegash 4y ago
  Having had worked in DC much of my career, more specifically within the IC, I think more likely they believe in a general utilitarian philosophy that “the ends justify the means”. It is a common Western world view to begin with, but my personal observation is it is especially common in the grayer professions of the world. Took me personally reaching a point in life and asking the big question “do they really?” or in my case, “doesn’t it matter how you get to those ends, too?” before my own worldview/choice of profession began to shift.
  • zmgsabst 4y ago
    The impact on public morale when your “necessary” actions are discovered is an outcome too. I find people who say “the ends justify the means” tend to ignore outcomes of their actions which don’t support their desired bad behavior — and generally completely ignore higher-order effects, such as the corruption of the US IC undermining the US rule of law in a way no foreign adversary ever could. I don’t think US IC members have the wisdom to know what ends come from their means — they just shut their eyes, utter the catechism, and commit illegal acts that undermine the US.
    • ethbr0 4y ago
      Imho, A Few Good Men is a great movie because, especially for 1992, it spoke directly to those gray areas. About ten years later, after 9/11, the US established Guantanamo Bay detention camp, where in 2023 there are still people (32?) held outside of normal legal processes. I would expect that the 32 remaining, out of almost 800 total, are a clear threat to the United States. But is it right to keep them there? What are the moral implications of the rest of America looking away while ugly work is done with their authority and in their name? Colonel Jessep isn't 100% wrong (Santiago's death may have saved lives, but his death shouldn't have happened), and Lt Kaffee isn't 100% right (Jessep broke the law, but people are not owed unvarnished truth without earning it). Everyone's who's worked for a large corporation, even outside the IC, knows that many things are done in that grey area, with the expectation bosses would deny asking someone to do it. See the recent news about Union Pacific train wheel bearing inspections being pressured to pass. To me, the balance of any system is accepting an optimal level of corruption/abuse, in order to permit efficient functioning. Grease lets things slip, yet also decreases friction. It's ugly, sad, and terrible... but also necessary. A perfectly enforced code of laws would rapidly implode any country in the world, because it wouldn't leave room for interpretation and exceptions.
• BurningFrog 4y ago
  That's not what that character believes. It's more that a nation of law and order is very desirable, but to maintain that society, those who threaten it must be fought by any means necessary. I don't know how true that is, but I can't rule out that that is how the world really works.
  • ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    > law and order is very desirable, but to maintain that society, those who threaten it must be fought by any means necessary Thats is one and the same thing. When people who 'protect' the law don't follow the law themselves, you no longer have rule of law.
    • BurningFrog 4y ago
      Sure. But that's a word definition argument, not a practical one.
      • user3939382 4y ago
        If it's a definition argument it's a pretty significant one, that underpins the functioning of our society. Is the law something the public has, through its representatives, consented to? Or is it something the administrators and enforcers of the law have decided unilaterally without that consent?
      • thephyber 4y ago
        You seem to be making an argument that law enforcement should do anything to keep order, no matter the legality. I would argue that as soon as a “good guy” cuts legal corners, they set a bad example for those next to them. Those little corruptions have outsized consequences over time, like compound interest. I was in Los Angeles when LAPD brass were trying to figure out what to do after the Rampart District had been revealed for a perfect example of this corruption.
        • BurningFrog 4y ago
• upofadown 4y ago
  Back in the day you could do off the books phone tapping with a set of alligator clips, a capacitor and a memo recorder. If you didn't want to do it yourself you could just get someone else to do it, preferably someone who works in a large central office (with or without phone company knowledge). The result was not usable in court, but it would save you immense amounts of time sitting around figuring out what criminals were doing. Things like Stingrays preserve the capability of off the books phone tapping. This sort of capability is very important for things like drug trafficking where none of the people involved are very likely to file a police report. So I suspect that the attitude of the law enforcement people involved is that they have been asked to do a job that is practically impossible without this capability.
  • ROTMetro 4y ago
    Then use the legal process laid out to get rid of the Fourth Amendment.
  • fallingknife 4y ago
    The fact that people involved are not filing police reports is a strong indication that it shouldn't be a crime in the first place.
• m463 4y ago
  I also wonder if reality is more like No Country for Old Men