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"The only reason Mayfield is a free man today is that the Spanish police repeatedly told the FBI that the print recovered from the bag of detonators didn’t matc

by pmorici 13y ago

"The only reason Mayfield is a free man today is that the Spanish police repeatedly told the FBI that the print recovered from the bag of detonators didn’t match Mayfield’s fingerprints. The FBI, however, continued to stand by its lab’s findings until Spanish authorities conclusively matched the print to the real culprit" Even if you are hardline nut and totally support the surveillance state it has to be frightening alarming that they were so dead set on harassing this one guy that they would have let the real culprit go free had the Spanish police not called them on their BS.

javajosh 13y ago
I would wager money that there are many FBI agents to this day who lament that they let Mayfield get away with his crimes.
- mox1 13y ago
  I would wager money that there are just as many FBI agents who to this day are disgusted by what the idiots at the Portland Field Office of the FBI did to this guy.
  - fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
    Those agents need to speak up. They especially need to speak up when they observe their colleagues conducting themselves as the article describes.
    - deegles 13y ago
      I don't think there will be much love for whistleblowers at any federal agency in the post-Snowden era.
  - nate_meurer 13y ago
    Awesome. This will be a great solace to the victim, I'm sure.
127 13y ago
When you give police power, they will use that power.
- mildtrepidation 13y ago
  Well-reasoned and supported statements about the corruptibility of human beings are done absolutely no favors by this kind of faux wisdom. You might as well stick to something people will recognize, like "absolute power corrupts absolutely," if you want to come off as edgy without actually contributing to the discussion.
  - dmix 13y ago
    Excess power is the root of this problem is it not? It's reductionist, but our society is structured around the idea of limiting powers (ie violence) to prevent exploitation. Limiting law-enforcement power, for example via civil courts and not secret ones, as it has been done for a century before this decade, was very sufficient. This is the end result of letting the state give itself more power at will, with a faux-democratic process to justify it.
  - 127 13y ago
    I saw it more as stating the obvious to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have often problems getting stuck in tangents. Reminding myself of the simple realities alters my ways of thinking. Life is life. Simple stuff, but effective to meditate on. Life is life, nothing more, nothing less. We don't need to ascribe meaning to it that it does not have. It's like the dark cave in Star Wars. It contains only what we bring with us.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
ChuckMcM 13y ago
One can always phrase things in a positive or negative way. I don't condone the FBI's behavior but I've noticed that law enforcement agencies tend to operate a bit like computer programs in that they get a lead, they follow it until they can either say "relevant" or "not relevant" and in this case they had a lead from their lab which was unresolved. So they kept pushing on it. Forensics, as most people should know, isn't an "exact" science, its a statistical science. It is entirely credible that Mayfield's fingerprint in their database was the closest match in the database for someone who was known to be in the area. It reads like it wasn't all that close a match as the Spanish authorities had discounted it, but from the FBI's process perspective it was a "lead" to run down.
- pmorici 13y ago
  The article says that the FBI didn't follow their _own procedures_ for matching prints. But procedures be dammed because the guy had an arrest record, which was also erroneous, and a Egyptian wife. It doesn't matter how exact or inexact the science is if you aren't even going to follow your own established procedures. The irony of your argument is that they would have reached the correct conclusion if they had in fact operated like a program. "Despite finding that Mayfield’s print was not an identical match to the print left on the bag of detonators, FBI fingerprint examiners rationalized away the differences, according to a report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG)." It seems they need to totally separate the finger print examiner from the investigating officers so that they can't be influenced by outside circumstantial facts.
  - ChuckMcM 13y ago
    You read the article right? Al Jazeera implies they didn't follow their own procedures, not the FBI. The FBI constructed a theory, and sought to validate or invalidate it. You can read the actual OIG Report [1] it is online, but the interesting bit is here, in Chapter 7 (page 269): "Based on our investigation, we concluded that the three FBI examiners who misidentified Mayfield's print were confused by the fact that the fingerprint on the Madrid bag contained as many as 10 points that corresponded to details in Mayfield's known finterprints in relative location, orientation, and intervening ridge count. This degree of similarity is extraordinarily rare and confused three FBI fingerprint examiners as well as a fourth, outside, court appointed examiner." I don't know how much you know about fingerprint forensics, I just know what I read, but a 10 point match is considered pretty strong from what I've read. And as I mentioned earlier, its a statistical thing not an exact thing. [1] http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0601/PDF_list.htm http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0601/PDF_list.htm

by pmorici 13y ago

javajosh 13y ago

I would wager money that there are many FBI agents to this day who lament that they let Mayfield get away with his crimes.

mox1 13y ago
I would wager money that there are just as many FBI agents who to this day are disgusted by what the idiots at the Portland Field Office of the FBI did to this guy.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  Those agents need to speak up. They especially need to speak up when they observe their colleagues conducting themselves as the article describes.
  - deegles 13y ago
    I don't think there will be much love for whistleblowers at any federal agency in the post-Snowden era.
- nate_meurer 13y ago
  Awesome. This will be a great solace to the victim, I'm sure.

127 13y ago

When you give police power, they will use that power.

mildtrepidation 13y ago
Well-reasoned and supported statements about the corruptibility of human beings are done absolutely no favors by this kind of faux wisdom. You might as well stick to something people will recognize, like "absolute power corrupts absolutely," if you want to come off as edgy without actually contributing to the discussion.
- dmix 13y ago
  Excess power is the root of this problem is it not? It's reductionist, but our society is structured around the idea of limiting powers (ie violence) to prevent exploitation. Limiting law-enforcement power, for example via civil courts and not secret ones, as it has been done for a century before this decade, was very sufficient. This is the end result of letting the state give itself more power at will, with a faux-democratic process to justify it.
- 127 13y ago
  I saw it more as stating the obvious to separate the wheat from the chaff. I have often problems getting stuck in tangents. Reminding myself of the simple realities alters my ways of thinking. Life is life. Simple stuff, but effective to meditate on. Life is life, nothing more, nothing less. We don't need to ascribe meaning to it that it does not have. It's like the dark cave in Star Wars. It contains only what we bring with us.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

ChuckMcM 13y ago

One can always phrase things in a positive or negative way. I don't condone the FBI's behavior but I've noticed that law enforcement agencies tend to operate a bit like computer programs in that they get a lead, they follow it until they can either say "relevant" or "not relevant" and in this case they had a lead from their lab which was unresolved. So they kept pushing on it. Forensics, as most people should know, isn't an "exact" science, its a statistical science. It is entirely credible that Mayfield's fingerprint in their database was the closest match in the database for someone who was known to be in the area. It reads like it wasn't all that close a match as the Spanish authorities had discounted it, but from the FBI's process perspective it was a "lead" to run down.

pmorici 13y ago
The article says that the FBI didn't follow their _own procedures_ for matching prints. But procedures be dammed because the guy had an arrest record, which was also erroneous, and a Egyptian wife. It doesn't matter how exact or inexact the science is if you aren't even going to follow your own established procedures. The irony of your argument is that they would have reached the correct conclusion if they had in fact operated like a program. "Despite finding that Mayfield’s print was not an identical match to the print left on the bag of detonators, FBI fingerprint examiners rationalized away the differences, according to a report by the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG)." It seems they need to totally separate the finger print examiner from the investigating officers so that they can't be influenced by outside circumstantial facts.
- ChuckMcM 13y ago
  You read the article right? Al Jazeera implies they didn't follow their own procedures, not the FBI. The FBI constructed a theory, and sought to validate or invalidate it. You can read the actual OIG Report [1] it is online, but the interesting bit is here, in Chapter 7 (page 269): "Based on our investigation, we concluded that the three FBI examiners who misidentified Mayfield's print were confused by the fact that the fingerprint on the Madrid bag contained as many as 10 points that corresponded to details in Mayfield's known finterprints in relative location, orientation, and intervening ridge count. This degree of similarity is extraordinarily rare and confused three FBI fingerprint examiners as well as a fourth, outside, court appointed examiner." I don't know how much you know about fingerprint forensics, I just know what I read, but a 10 point match is considered pretty strong from what I've read. And as I mentioned earlier, its a statistical thing not an exact thing. [1] http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0601/PDF_list.htm http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/s0601/PDF_list.htm