Just from DEFCON connections, I'm on a first name basis with a roughly four different FBI employees who are constantly trying to recruit myself or friends as informants.
We discuss, openly, what a bad deal it is to be an informant and how I don't have any useful information for them anyway. But they persist. Thankfully lightly. Nothing like what you mentioned, but I fully believe that your story happens. And regularly.
This is the lesson I learned to teach to my kids.
I didn't get to this complete turnaround easily. It took years of systemic, post-911 malfeasance (and endless accompanying lies) by pretty much every fed LEO/IC agency, to nurture this mindset in me.
How are they supposed to investigate crime if nobody talks to them?
Nobody forces the FBI to have the system they have. We could have laws that make interrogation different. We could have laws that change the consequences of accidentally lying to federal agents, that raise the legal standard for consequential lies. The FBI could get rid of the no-fly list, they could stop threatening innocent security researchers to get info. We could get rid of "gotcha" interrogation techniques that are explicitly designed to try and trick people into signing away their rights.
They built this system, and nobody but them is to blame for it. If the FBI wants people to talk to them, they just need to stop punching people in the face. A lack of informants is a problem they created and that they can solve.
If the system puts in place some better checks and balances for people to fight abuses (as the one in the post on top), I will gladly go back and do my civic duties to stop crime.
So, how are they supposed to investigate if nobody talks? They are supposed to fight for better checks and balances, so people can start talking again.
I've been in many European countries and have travelled a lot to the US. I've never experienced a disconnect between police and the general population as stark as it is in the US. And it has also affected me. Seeing police anywhere tends to comfort me, in the US it makes me nervous. To be clear, I've never had any negative experiences with police anywhere myself, but stories about bad cops are just so prevalent in the US.
My dad taught me early on that talking to cops would likely get me into trouble, as they want to make an arrest, and it does not matter if you are guilty or not, as long as they get you to confess. Later experiences taught me that my dad, a well known and liked cop in our town, was not someone to be trusted either.
P.S.: I do have european citizenship. Also, dark skin.
Imagine it: You agree to an interview because you are a witness to a crime, tell 100% the truth, but then they take notes, misinterpret their own notes (either intentionally or due to incompetence), and then charge you with lying/obstruction.
I've seen it happen to completely innocent people. Sadly, the best advice is not to talk to investigators.
And yeah, I was terrified. It was a mistake to talk to them in the first place.
They got in my door by telling me they wanted my opinion on some activity they felt is a threat to a visiting president then things took a fast turn asking me about my research and contacts.
FBI is 100% allowed to lie to you but if you lie back to them they own you. They also like to catch you unprepared and off guard. Don't fall for it.
Say something like:
"I'm sorry this is not a topic I feel well prepared to talk about right now. If you have a court order I will honor it but even then I am going to need time to collect my thoughts and ensure I am speaking accurately. I'll walk you out"
Then get a lawyer to coach you on what you can and can't say. If they catch you in a lie even by accident they can -force- you to be an informant.
Isn't that racketeering?
Come to think of it, you might be on to something!
Any large-scale coordination will necessarily eclipse the individual and take on a life of its own; you can't really have it both ways.
The great self-referential inconsistency, if you will.
I am older and have spent a lot more time researching law now, and no longer choose to let strongarm chilling effects like this work.
There are tons of good people in law enforcement and three letter agencies that actually protect people. I know some of them.
I also know some overstep and abuse their power and it is on all of us to call it out when it happens.
"I had the FBI come threaten me to stop a talk that isn't as scary as 20 SCADA bugs," Graham says.
ref: https://www.darkreading.com/vulnerabilities---threats/power-... (2012)
You can be civil with people who don't share the same agenda as you. Shocking thought in today's society, I guess.
- you will be expected to report on what other people, including your friends, said or did. Even if they are not doing anything illegal FBI might want information to pressure them into being an informant.
I wasn't in a situation like that, but I expect it would have a huge chilling effect on me - I'd start self-censoring interactions with others our of fear they mention something benign, but gray area legally that I would laugh at otherwise, but now would be required to report and get them in trouble.
This wouldn't have to be something big - I'm sure at some point in time a friend of yours recommended a movie or a tv show that isn't available in your region, implying they have pirated a copy. Would your first reaction be to notify FBI?
> INTERVIEWER: Tell me a little bit about how you felt about working for the FBI. What motivated you and what you thought you were, what ends you thought you were serving?
> WILLIAM O'NEAL: Well, in my community, the policemen were, I mean, it was the quickest way to gain respect. I mean, I think I grew up wanting to be a policeman, admiring and respecting policemen, although I always thought it was outside of my reach. I, my neighborhood was not unlike most people that grew up in Chicago, most young people, we were very mischievous and did a lot of juvenile-type, petty, criminal-type things, but stealing a car and all of a sudden having the FBI, having a case with the FBI, the thought of be--having, really going to jail got my attention. And, so when he asked me to join the Black Panther Party, and he used terms, he never used the word informant. He always said, "You're working for me," and I associated him as the FBI. So all of a sudden I was working for the FBI, which, in my mind, at that point, I associated with being an FBI agent. So I felt good about it. I felt like I was working undercover for the FBI doing something good for the finest police organization in America. And so I was pretty proud.
http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eii/eiiweb/one5427.1047.125willia...
colloquially called "Brownshirts"
Also terrible fashion tastes.
Plus then you're on the government's radar and they think you're money-motivated, not patriotism-motivated. Everyone involved in any cases brought with your help will think poorly of you. This might turn into cases brought against you. You will never get a government job. Your identity will probably be exposed as an informant at some point -- usually through public court records.
If you actually are patriotism-motivated, go join the agency. There is no upside to informing on people.
At first, I thought the boy who was informing was with the good guys taking down drug kingpins. By the end of it, I realized the FBI were just manipulating and using up this young kid.
Polygraphs are not admissible as evidence in court and civilian employers are not allowed to administer them to employees. Regardless, the US Government still uses them for security clearance.
More information: https://antipolygraph.org/
The 2009 NAS report is particularly damming, but I can't find a free copy and I guess that's over a decade now, my mistake.
Somewhere between zero and very depending on how good the person doing the interrogating is and how much the person being questioned knows about the techniques being used against them.
It's basically a good cop bad cop routine without the expense of the good cop and half as many human factors to screw it up.
With your "very effective" conditions, I'd argue that an innocent person would quite often respond the same as a guilty person, making the process unreliable in a different way.
So I don't think it's mainly window-dressing. It's not perfect but enough to scare off most bad guys.
1. You almost never go through them unless you're in the process of obtaining a security clearance (I'd be quite surprised if the UK didn't do something similar for their clearance process). In fact, I have never heard of any other instance where someone was required to have one, as they are generally not admissible evidence in courts.
2. It is my understanding that the accuracy of polygraphs is mostly down to the skill of the person reading the device and giving the test (hence why they aren't usable as evidence).
The poly is not limited to one session. The examiner will keep asking the subject to come back until they are satisfied with the results, or until the subject quits their job. Depending on the personality type of the subject, it can be extremely stressful, or just routine. Many engineers are "Type A" and that is the type most susceptible to stress.
These rights are privately enforced. There is no public federal enforcement. You have to do what this gentleman is doing. Sue in the courts.
It is becoming apparent that the U.S. needs an independent agency focussed on transgressions by law enforcement / a civil rights enforcement bureau. One could keep it purely civil, to avoid conflicting with the DoJ. But in the same way that criminal prosecution is specialized enough that consolidating it in the DoJ makes sense, investigating law enforcement is specialized and conflicted enough that consolidating it under an independent agency makes sense.
YMMV, but:
Many agencies have an Auditor General with a cadre of agents whose entire role is to investigate and publicly report on what that agency does wrong. Sadly, I can't think of any Auditor General's office with the power to punish. So if the agency is acting unconstitutionally or illegally because the governor or agency director wants them to, it's on the public to push for change. That's a hard ask.
For issues with state agencies, contact your District Attorney or state Attorney General. I've never done this, but it's stuck in my mind as the path to go. If other people want to report their dead end stories of doing this, I'd welcome the lesson.
I've contacted the AG about stuff in the past. He was a complete idiot. I contacted him about a state law that was being violated by a state government policy and he said he would forward the complaint to the FBI. Why? It has nothing to do with federal law!
Note: outing classified to an Inspector General not cleared, will still get you thrown in prison. Even pointing in a direction to start asking questions or getting cleared may carry legal consequences that OIG has no authority to protect you from, even if in the end you are in the right.
I've often thought the OIG should be charged with and have authority to countermand and investigate executive agency oversteps through unfettered access to all information regardless of classification in the Executive branch, but it'll never happen.
I very much respect my friends and colleagues who have made the other choice, but it's a lifelong sacrifice of liberties that are otherwise present.
Note that each agency has its own IG (usually within an OIG directly under the top-level of the agency), there is not a single central OIG.
This was the case with prosecutors. Then in 1870, President Ulysses S. Grant consolidated them under the DOJ [1]. The common portion of their work, criminal litigation, was specialised and conflicted enough that the benefits of densifying its practitioners outweighed the cost of distance from the field.
I argue a similar problem persists among our Auditors and Solicitors General. Yes, there are advantages to having them in house. But there are disadvantages, too, and the bad outweighs the good.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Ju...
State agencies often have their own IG or similar office, and DAs may not have jurisdiction over state agencies. Some states have centralized agencies that have general oversight of illegal activities in state and sometimes local agencies, as well (Bureau of State Audits in California, for instance.)
We have such a organisation here (Aotearoa) to monitor the police. https://www.ipca.govt.nz/
It is mostly captured, policywise, and supports outrages committed by police.
It is a improvement over what there used to be, but not much.
What has made the biggest difference here is a succession of cases where it became undeniable that the police were raping and framing. They have taken shame and attempting to reform themselves, which is a surprise to those of us who over the years had to deal with the bigoted, prejudiced, violent pigs.
There is a lot of opposition within, and without, the police here. Time will tell.
Hence my objection to the pejorative term often applied to all police offers equally - it only advances a "them vs. us" mindset, which is not at all true for my country if you're not an active criminal, a country I share with the user I was replying to.
Responding to a taunt is an admission of guilt?
Sure. But it still just hurts your main argument.
Ask George Floyd... Oh wait, you cannot.
"Pig" is a pejorative term, I used it in connection with the violence, bigotry, prejudice, adn stupidity (forgot to mention that), the raping, the framing....
I did not use it as a replacement for "peace officer". I know what I said and I meant it
That seems to be quite clearly the intent.
Anecdotally around my region people refer to corrupt police officers as pigs, so when someone says something derogatory about 'pigs', it's colloquially understood as "the violent bad ones that extort and over-step, not the ones that help you find your dog."
Noting that I left out extort because that's incredibly rare here, and prosecuted very quickly if it ever does.
I should add a white person got killed the same way before that. No riots. No news. No screaming crying people in the streets demanding justice. No change then either. The family of that person didn't even get money from it.
[0] https://abc7news.com/san-jose-police-beating-hotel-couple-ta...
[1] https://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/10/31/utah-nurse-arrested-f...
I personally have a monthly recurring donation. Give what works for you.
Tagging money for specific issues is problematic because the organisation doesn’t change its budget percentages for small donations (money is fungible), and organisations find tagging difficult to manage [TODO insert article link here].
Ex: A policy of %80 towards earmarking & %20 towards the general fund to help boot up new projects / general admin would be totally fine with many donators.
What you talk about is much like the arguments against voting, while such logic makes society lose it's prisoner's dilemma for change.
But yes, they kind of used to do that.
No, it wasn’t. It was founded on an impotent central government. It later adopted checks and balances when it decided it needed a much more powerful central government and what it was founded on was unsuitable.
But just because US Gov 2.x lasted longer than 1.x doesn’t mean everything in the 2.0. release was perfect; its certainly needed many minor and bugfix releases, and there’s no reason to think that it might not at some point need another ground-up rewrite.
In the case of the FBI, the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility (essentially, the FBI’s “Internal Affairs” unit), DoJ Inspector General, your reps in either House of Congress, or members of the Judiciary Committee (in either House) or the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (in the Senate) or the Oversight and Reform Committee (in the House).
May also be worth going to media and/or NGOs, though which, if any (especially of the latter) are most likely to be useful varies a lot by who you are and what the exact details of thr misconduct are.
Private litigation may or may not be useful (both governmental and personal immunities come into play) and can be very expensive (though NGOs may help with this.)
A trooper knew he was holding an incorrect charge against my wife. The charge carried with it pretrial restrictions that would not have occurred under the correct charge (a "leash law" violation). IAD didn't care. The investigation even tried to explain the trooper's lie to the judge about why he was amending the charge as just a misunderstanding... yeah, ok. Neither state reps replied to my two letters. The governor claims he can't get involved in a court issue even though I only wrote him about the practices of the state police (which he oversees) leading to violations, and that the policy should change. I contacted the ACLU, but this is not a big enough issue for them.
The only thing with any traction is an investigative journalist who is pitching the story to their editor.
I'm not holding my breath, but I am either in the process of submitting or waiting to hear about: a complaint to the Bar about the ADA having information that it was an incorrect charge and allowing it to stand, the DOJ to investigate the practices of the state police knowingly holding false charges, and a response from my latest letter to the governor.
I would guess that would be the most expedient route, if you can get them interested. If you work for a big employer in their district, and are comfortable with it, having your employer reach out to them might help.
Well, the first more than the second; a rep doesn’t have to read your letter to be briefed and direct staff followup, which may itself produce results.
If it's a form letter, you're just going to be lumped in with the others of similar concerns.
This page suggests that the office does investigate misconduct claims and issue reports periodically: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/type/investigation
This is basically internal affairs for the FBI. Report here. Personally, I would make a report here no matter what, just to start a paper-trail of them harassing you.
The way malwarebytes was handled is another example great the FBI has just alienated a large potential group of sources and this FBI idiot by bullying Mr Chebli has alienated a lot of Lebanese Americans who might provide information in future.
Besides why didn't you go for a lawsuit? They threatened and harassed you. They threatened your employment, your livelihood.
Not to mention you claim to be a security researcher and the first thing on your mind wasn't to record them and take down their details to publish later on internet. It's a good punishment. It would prevent those who visits you to do certain work and with their face and name everyone will know what they are, where they live. In case people want to visit and leave some very justified feedback about the FBI. It's perfectly legal to record them since they entered your home/property. Always, always record!
I bet they left a card so you could contact them. Even publishing that alone is good.
FBI is very afraid of the public light because of this in my opinion illegal stuff they do. FBI must have positive PR. Bad PR means less trust, less informants, etc.
A a security researcher you are supposed to know this stuff. How to deal with FBI, etc. I'm disappointed.
Most of the attempts to recruit informants are benign, as I mentioned in my own story elsewhere in the thread. It boils down to being in Vegas the same few days and having a drink and killing time talking about how great America is (yes, FBI agents generally do love their country). It's good PR for everyone involved.
I 100% would handle things very differently today and advise others based on my mistakes.
They gave me a good pretext for talking to me and caught me 30 seconds out of bed. Still. Lessons learned.
Just sharing another example.
They harrassed me at home twice, talked to my employer and made a huge stink trying to create pressure.
I didn't cave and they eventually went away, because I committed no crimes and they knew it.
As a security researcher I sometimes make contact with controversial people in order to get information, like a journalist might. They wanted those contacts. Too bad.