5 ms·

FBI employees, entrusted with stopping computer crimes, commit them too

34 points by iProject 14y ago

MaysonL 14y ago
Of course, this is the petty personal misconduct. It doesn't include the more troubling official actions, such as coordinating the multi-city crackdown on the Occupy movement.
- jmspring 14y ago
  From my experience, the Occupy movement was quite regional. The city I live in, the typical anarchist crowd joined with the homeless need a place to camp crowd which resulted in about an acre of city park land closed for a number of weeks to clean up all the human waste and drug residue. Maybe there was done big city coordination, but in my small, coastal, liberal, college town, it was all about the typical antisocial crowd pushing more of the same. The added secret sauce were the meth, heroin, and other tweakers that joined in. Clearly a product of The Man. I mean governments colluding.
  - loeg 14y ago
    While your satire is super clever, I think it is misdirected. OP is talking about the coordinated country-wide crackdown[0] on OWS (likely coordinated to kill media interest), not about the OWS folks themselves. The FBI coordinated take-down plans with local police, DHS, and big banks. That much seems pretty clear. [0]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coor...
    - GHFigs 14y ago
      The FBI coordinated take-down plans with local police, DHS, and big banks. That much seems pretty clear. If you read carefully, you'll see that that's actually an insinuation made by the organization that filed the FOIA request, not something they actually proved. The actual documents they produced only show that various organizations within and outside of the FBI communicated about OWS at various times. There's nothing inherently unusual or nefarious about this -- those organizations are in communication all the time on any number of topics. That a nationwide mass protest movement often targeted specifically at banks and speckled with anarchist overtones happened to be a topic discussed by a nationwide security organization is...not actually that surprising. It would actually be more surprising, and troubling, if they hadn't known or communicating anything about OWS at all.
    - jmspring 14y ago
      Satire, clever? Nope, just someone who lives in a town where the local neer-do-wells will embrace any excuse to organize. The needles, human waste, and closed off park were all very real. This same group has trashed many open spaces around the city and county I live in. When Occupy was popular, they embraced that mantra. Oakland, Wall Street, and other places definitely brought forward many legitimate issues. However, given the unorganized nature of the Occupy movement, there were opportunists willing to embrace the timing and label. I live in one of those places.
panacea 14y ago
To my mind, being a hypocrite is up there as one of the worst character traits a person or organisation can possess. It's one of the few things that actually produces an emotional response of anger from me. I wonder why that is?
- enraged_camel 14y ago
  I feel the opposite way. I think it humanizes them by showing that even though in their professional lives they are draconian enforcers of certain laws, in their personal lives they are people like you and me.
  - panacea 14y ago
    To clarify, I was speaking more in general about hypocrisy. In this case, I don't hate the people, but I don't like the hypocrisy inherent in the organisation.
- InclinedPlane 14y ago
  Hypocrisy is fundamentally hard to avoid, it's almost a universal human trait. I think the bigger problem is absolutism when it's not justified.
  - panacea 14y ago
    Isn't absolutism often the root cause of hypocrisy? As in the stereotypical closeted homosexual lawmaker pushing for discriminatory laws based on absolute religious beliefs.
niggler 14y ago
Reminds me of the RIAA caught pirating: http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-through-out-ip-addresses-111221/ http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-throug...

34 points by iProject 14y ago

Of course, this is the petty personal misconduct. It doesn't include the more troubling official actions, such as coordinating the multi-city crackdown on the Occupy movement.

jmspring 14y ago
From my experience, the Occupy movement was quite regional. The city I live in, the typical anarchist crowd joined with the homeless need a place to camp crowd which resulted in about an acre of city park land closed for a number of weeks to clean up all the human waste and drug residue. Maybe there was done big city coordination, but in my small, coastal, liberal, college town, it was all about the typical antisocial crowd pushing more of the same. The added secret sauce were the meth, heroin, and other tweakers that joined in. Clearly a product of The Man. I mean governments colluding.
- loeg 14y ago
  While your satire is super clever, I think it is misdirected. OP is talking about the coordinated country-wide crackdown[0] on OWS (likely coordinated to kill media interest), not about the OWS folks themselves. The FBI coordinated take-down plans with local police, DHS, and big banks. That much seems pretty clear. [0]: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-crackdown-occupy http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coor...
  - GHFigs 14y ago
    The FBI coordinated take-down plans with local police, DHS, and big banks. That much seems pretty clear. If you read carefully, you'll see that that's actually an insinuation made by the organization that filed the FOIA request, not something they actually proved. The actual documents they produced only show that various organizations within and outside of the FBI communicated about OWS at various times. There's nothing inherently unusual or nefarious about this -- those organizations are in communication all the time on any number of topics. That a nationwide mass protest movement often targeted specifically at banks and speckled with anarchist overtones happened to be a topic discussed by a nationwide security organization is...not actually that surprising. It would actually be more surprising, and troubling, if they hadn't known or communicating anything about OWS at all.
  - jmspring 14y ago
    Satire, clever? Nope, just someone who lives in a town where the local neer-do-wells will embrace any excuse to organize. The needles, human waste, and closed off park were all very real. This same group has trashed many open spaces around the city and county I live in. When Occupy was popular, they embraced that mantra. Oakland, Wall Street, and other places definitely brought forward many legitimate issues. However, given the unorganized nature of the Occupy movement, there were opportunists willing to embrace the timing and label. I live in one of those places.

panacea 14y ago

To my mind, being a hypocrite is up there as one of the worst character traits a person or organisation can possess. It's one of the few things that actually produces an emotional response of anger from me. I wonder why that is?

enraged_camel 14y ago
I feel the opposite way. I think it humanizes them by showing that even though in their professional lives they are draconian enforcers of certain laws, in their personal lives they are people like you and me.
- panacea 14y ago
  To clarify, I was speaking more in general about hypocrisy. In this case, I don't hate the people, but I don't like the hypocrisy inherent in the organisation.
InclinedPlane 14y ago
Hypocrisy is fundamentally hard to avoid, it's almost a universal human trait. I think the bigger problem is absolutism when it's not justified.
- panacea 14y ago
  Isn't absolutism often the root cause of hypocrisy? As in the stereotypical closeted homosexual lawmaker pushing for discriminatory laws based on absolute religious beliefs.

niggler 14y ago

Reminds me of the RIAA caught pirating: http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-through-out-ip-addresses-111221/ http://torrentfreak.com/riaa-someone-else-is-pirating-throug...