Re:I refused to become an FBI informant, the government put ...
by danShumway on Wednesday April 07, 2021 @09:34AM
(#26724670)
As an analogy, Punching Jim down by the corner store punches everybody in the face who talks to him, so everyone has stopped talking to him. But how is Punching Jim supposed to fulfill his job as a therapist if his patients are constantly afraid of being punched? The answer is that Punching Jim might just be a bad therapist, and maybe it's good for therapists that punch people in the face to have fewer patients.
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.
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.