The FBI has become little more than the enforcement arm of the organized white-collar crime system run out of Wall Street offices with the active support of the

The FBI has become little more than the enforcement arm of the organized white-collar crime system run out of Wall Street offices with the active support of the White House and the Congress. This is why, despite the FBI's sweeping surveillance powers, no coordinated prosecution targeting the subprime mortgage fraudsters who brought down the economy in 2008-2009 was conducted - instead, they were all bailed out with taxpayer dollars in a coordinated Republican-Democrat left-right operation. In contrast, little Iceland put 39 of its top bankers in jail for their role in that event. It's true that an entity like the FBI is needed to police white-collar crime, because otherwise corporate conflicts over market share etc. would soon escalate into violent conflict (e.g. Mexican drug cartels, Prohibition-era alcohol distribution gangs, etc.), but they've become an organization that does more to protect the extremely wealthy white-collar criminals from prosecution than to gather evidence that would put them in jail. The fact that top-tier FBI officials so often 'retire' to lucrative private positions in Wall Street firms should serve as solid evidence that the organization is corrupt. As far as why they want to retain warrantless surveillance powers that don't require them to go before a judge and leave any kind of evidenciary record in support of that surveillance, well, would STASI have wanted to do that in East Germany, either?