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Counterterrorism Agents Were Told They Could Suspend the Law
politkal writes "According to the FBI's internal inquiry on counterterrorism training, the FBI taught agents that the Bureau 'has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedoms of others;' that agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asian;' that Arabs were 'prone to outbursts' of a 'Jekyll & Hyde' nature."
Even better: "That review, now complete, did not result in a single disciplinary action for any instructor. Nor did it mandate the retraining of any FBI agent exposed to what the Bureau concedes was inappropriate material. Nor did it look at any intelligence reports that might have been influenced by the training."
Seems about right. Business as usual.
Carry on.
agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asia
Christ. The racism I can cope with, but the sheer incompetence... how can these people have jobs?
The FBI has been a corrupt investigative agency since the 1960s when they would send their own agents into groups of protesters to start a fight in order to justify moving the police in to arrest and remove the "violent" protesters. They were called provokateurs, and in large demonstrations back then, activists were taught to surround them and then quickly beat the f*ck out of them and leave them in a puddle of their own blood, vomit, and broken bones.
These days, with cameras everywhere, they have to rely on other tactics, but they're just as dirty. It is no surprise the FBI trains agents to worry about the law later -- the law is sufficiently complex right now that it can be interpreted to allow just about anything. We're now shipping US citizens who have never been convicted of any crime, nor left the country, to jails in other countries where we torture them in ways that the Geneva convention bans as war crimes; We simply redefined the legal definition of war. The US has not fought a war in 30 years, under the existing definition.
The FBI, homeland security, and other agencies get away with this kind of abuse of its citizens because nobody stands up and fights back. Imagine how different things would be if that guy who decided to mace those students who were sitting, in a peaceful protest, was suddenly mobbed and reduced to a bloody pulp. In most countries, this is how police brutality is dealt with: The citizens literally mob the guy and sometimes police die as a result... and this is how the balance of power is maintained.
It is a radical position to take, but our founding fathers were right: The right to bear arms is meant to ensure that when you, as a citizen, see abuse of power, you grab your gun and blow the guy away. Mind you, I don't advocate violence except as an option of last resort... but if a friend, family member, or fellow protester is being beaten or about to be "disappeared" for excercising their lawful and constitutionally granted rights.... the Founding fathers were quite clear on what you should do: Stop them, by any means necessary. I don't know whether you should, or whether I would, but... it was the method used to secure our freedom from Britain and ensure civil liberties for almost 150 years so it is worth thinking about at least.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
From the article:
> Of the approximately 160,000 pages of training material reviewed, less than one percent contained factually inaccurate or imprecise information or used stereotypes
I say: let's occupy Quantico!
lucm, indeed.
Exactly! I don't see any falsehoods in that training program.
I was referring to the 'ability to bend or suspend the law'. After all, nothing has been done to correct that statement.
One of the primary reasons that the United States continues its descent into this strange dystopian corporate/security fascist state is because there are, almost without exception, no criminal or political repercussions for acts which are outside the realm of social norms. Black youths can be gunned down, drones can fly unrestricted, SWAT teams can invade and kill completely innocent people, bankers can steal/defraud trillions of dollars, whistleblowers are thrown in jail without trial for years, American citizens are executed at the sole and extra-judicial behest of the President, MPAA/RIAA-friendly treaties are negotiated in secret...
And on and on and on.
There are no repercussions for the actors in any of these cases. Here, the FBI says they can suspend the law because, well, who's going to stop them? Congress? Hardly. The President? Incredibly unlikely. The FBI, and most of the national security apparatus, is wholly safe from suffering any consequences to their actions, no matter how heinous they may be to the American public or the world at large.
Because they work for the government? I wish there was a better explanation, but that's pretty much it.
they probably don't, or at least not the same job or training contracts.
It might have been so farcically stupid that people in the training rightly realized it was asinine and didn't actually do anything from it either, hence the lack of a need for retraining.
Inevitably in life you will go to a training session where the person doing the teaching clearly has no clue what they're talking about, and sometimes it's easier to just write it off as a wasted venture than to try and argue the point or get a refund. This happens in technical training as much as social, business, security, safety or any other kind of training and I somehow doubt this is the first time the FBI has got a bad deal training people on something.
It depends how long ago all of this was, and what has happened since, but a lot of times you can't get your money back, since the person is out of business, or it would cost more in lawyer fees to recoup it.
And, sadly, there are racists in the US. The sooner you get used to dealing with that the better off you'll be. They're everywhere, even if there aren't a lot of them, you should have enough brains to know to ignore them. It's not like the FBI is training 5 year olds on racial profiling, these are adults who should have the brains to realize when information they're getting is batshit crazy, and the ones who think it's the greatest thing ever were racists already. By the time they get to the FBI they're long past the point of being able to influence their biases (or lack thereof) about people from a training session.
Who watches the watchers? Wikileaks, and that is why the US government has been working so hard to discredit them, attack their leaders, and to shut them down.
Palm trees and 8
Obviously you do not work in or have significant experience in the private sector.
"Who watches the watchmen?"
As I recall it was kind of a flop in the box office; so relatively few people.
This is probably not going to be popular, and may cost me Karma, but the reality of the world is there are cultural differences between people from region to region, trying to be PC about everything even to the point of using the term PC does not work in the real world. Training agents about the tendancies of one culture or anoher is not racism. If it was done right or wrong at this time I do not know.
If these absolutely idiotic notions about people of other cultures and religions, or even the suggestion that an agent is above the law, have managed to reach the level of teaching doctrine at the FBI, we're fucked. Not because they have an institutional tendency toward violating our rights. That would be bad enough. But no. That such utter bullshit is embraced and taught there is an indicator of dangerous incompetence, not to mention ignorance. This our nation's elite law enforcement agency? Seriously? It's almost as if the average agent were educated in the Texas public school system. Now, I am scared, because these idiots are just too fucking stupid to do their jobs even half-right.
They were recently scolded by a Judge, for trying to imprison a group of supposed "terrorists" who were really just a rifle club:
"The prosecution is not free to roam at large â" to shift its theory of criminality so as to take advantage of each passing vicissitude of the trial,â Judge Victoria Roberts said. âoeIf the government now admits that the plan alleged in Count 1 of the indictment (seditious conspiracy) did not exist, then defendants must be acquitted," Roberts wrote in her 28-page ruling. "The governmentâ(TM)s case is built largely of circumstantial evidence. While this evidence could certainly lead a rational fact finder to conclude that âsomething fishyâ(TM) was going on, it does not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendants reached a concrete agreement to forcibly oppose the U.S. government."
http://www.infowars.com/hutaree-acquitted-in-federal-terrorism-case/
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I think you're reading this the wrong way. Asians usually do not shake hands, they bow.
Read it the other way around if you still don't understand. "Agents should never attempt to bow in front of an European."
agents should 'never attempt to shake hands with an Asia
Christ. The racism I can cope with, but the sheer incompetence... how can these people have jobs?
What racism? That's just cultural sensitivity. Everybody knows you don't shake hands with the Asians, you bow to them. And serve green tea, not black tea. Gee, in Africa, you would shake your spear instead of shaking hands, for example.
Ezekiel 23:20
Sorry, but "batshit crazy" ideas should never have reached the level of teaching doctrine. It did, and that is completely inexcusable because it demonstrates, at best, an ineffective review process for the publication of that doctrine, and at worst, a frightening level of incompetence or outright malice throughout the institution. This is absolutely not the work of a few "bad apples".
Within 10 years all video evidence will be useless, for the simple reason that anyone will be able to render any sort of video. Want a video of the Prez free-basing with hookers? No problem. Want a video of the prosecutor and the judge having sex with a dead donkey? No problem.
Eventually, the standard of proof will fall back to "if you don't have at least 2 witnesses, forget it."
Let's call it what it is, Anti-Social Media.
The group "Asians" include a heck of a lot of cultures and countries. The only two that will typically bow are Koreans and Japanese. Good luck getting somebody from China to bow. Its like thinking all Canadians live in igloos.
... since Congress could have put exceptions in the law for them, but did not.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Obviously you do not work in or have significant experience in the private sector.
Private sector is.... wait for it..... private. If a private company tells their 5 employees not to shake hands with Asians, that's on them.
But when the government does it? That's when there's a problem.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Instead of a bonus driven board of directors?
Obviously, you've never had a serious medical condition.
Check your premises.
Maybe "shake hands" is a euphemism for "get involved in a land war"?
Not so much with the shaking spear, but I did get in trouble when I tried to shake hands in Ghana. As both I and the person I met were carrying luggage in our right hands, I extended my left. The left hand is often used in lieu of toilet paper, so that's an insult. The man understood my mistake, and explained it to me, but I was much more aware of my left hand for the next few months.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Or the shaking hands things is just a cultural etiquette thing. My company has similar things in its overseas travel guide.
But, no, let's just assume racism because it's easier to rage than think.
Oh, is that the "revise broad plans to resolve budget problems as needed" panel?
I totally agree about the "Secretary shall determine" bit, though... I'd much rather my insurance coverage is determined by an MBA who measures success in dollars rather than a government official whose success is measured in lives, yep.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
After visiting Egypt, Jordan and Syria I came away with the feeling that the people I met there would literally give you the shirt off their backs if you needed it, but if you crossed them then it would be bad news.
While on my travels I got invited into many strangers homes and offered uncalled for but extremely gracious hospitality.
Yet at least one time, while in a hostel in Syria I seemed to be the instigator of a huge yelling outburst from a Syrian because he offered me a cup of tea and I absentmindedly waved him off because I was busy writing in my diary. Yes, it was my fault. I admit that I did not follow his social norms and I regret doing it, but the reaction was extreme. And while that may be one specific example after all my travels I came away feeling that this was not out of the ordinary.
So while I have no idea of the extent of the FBI training, I can understand the J&H comment - although probably would disagree with how the material was presented.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The parent a few level up said that they can get away with incompetence because they work for the government and thus implied that government accepts incompetence and private sector doesn't. The GP answered "There are just as incompetent people on private sector". Now you're derailing it with "Sure, but it doesn't matter, because it's the private sector".
Sure, I (think I) understand the point: If someone wastes their own money, it's less important than if they waste taxpayer money. However, when someone says that "Government accepts competence, private sector doesn't" they're more or less implying "If we let private sector take care of things, they'll be done better than when we let the government take care of them". When someone refutes by saying that private sector is just as competent, they're implying that transferring stuff to private sector might not do any good because there are always incompetent people, no matter what the organization is.
After that, saying what you just said seems to be completely irrelevant.
When studying my country's history and the bloody things done by the NKVD (and it's predecessors) I was always having this question: "How could that happen?". I simply couldn't believe so many people could simply serve Stalin and do all the violent things in such big scale (millions of victims.) The violence often highly exceeded what was required by the order. But then I found something close to an explanation of that by Philip Zimbardo in a TED talk. He argues that structures where people have a uniform, orders, hierarchy, power over others (like in this case when one can even cross the law's edges), and racism, seem to provide the grounds for violent behaior.
What racism? That's just cultural sensitivity. Everybody knows you don't shake hands with the Asians, you bow to them
That's the equivalent of saying that Europeans only eat cheese and garlic and wear striped shirts and berets.
Bowing is not common in Asia. It is common in a couple countries in Asia. Across Asia it is very uncommon though.
If we're going to teach cultural differences then let's at least be accurate about them.
I find being offended by me offensive.
Well I, for one, am much more of other people's left hands now.
How are sites slashdotted when nobody reads TFAs?
You can't know based on a few sentences taken out of context, and neither can any of the people who are huffing indignantly.
Nothing. There is nothing you can do. We are totally and utterly fucked and there's nothing anyone can do about it. We're not getting out of this hole without another Civil War.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Or that all Americans are obese gun fanatics.
Oh wait.
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
I was much more aware of my left hand for the next few months
".... if you know what I mean."
Ceci n'est pas un sig.
That is the correct assumption, yes... I meant something along the lines of "lives improved and lowered death rates, and approval ratings, and local economic growth, and several other metrics generally unrelated to the Secretary's personal finances" but that didn't fit the structure as well.
The FBI's apparent flaunting of the law may indeed be a problem, but I won't be quick to judge. This story is full of so much sensationalism that I doubt the entire thing. Not so much doubt the factual content - I'm sure that in the truckloads of training material the FBI has, some is inaccurate and offensive - but I doubt there was any malice. Quotes are given without context, and assertions are made without support. There's just not enough evidence of willful wrongdoing to make me particularly outraged.
In my opinion, a good outcome for this situation is that the FBI goes through and reviews all of their training procedures for offensive and inaccurate content. Statements that aren't perfectly clear should be revised. State that bending the law requires a judge's approval, even if the paperwork isn't perfectly in order. Clarify appropriate greetings by culture. Don't just make blanket statements.
Similarly, other organizations should do the same review. Let this be a lesson to us all, rather than an embarrassment for one organization.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I do so love my fat gun. Thank you Fleshlight (Made in the USA!). Any of you Iglooians up for some Chatroulette?
I've worked in two government offices and three private businesses. I can tell you that there is plenty of incompetence to go around. In fact, businesses are even more likely to successfully cover stuff up, since they have no duty to disclose at all. The government, at least in theory, must respond to FOI requests.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Dude. Look at the spelling.
It's in Canada, obviously. Quebec, I bet. Crazy Frenchies. You can't shake hands with 'em. They get all Jekyll-and-Hyde on your Anglophone ass.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The point is that the private sector is full of incompetence too, and that bears out my experience. In fact, I found that government offices were more tightly run, with an eye on the bottom line. The private sector, however, seems to focus on making sales, and that is were most of the effort (and excellent) goes. Actually getting real work done can be ludicrous.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Having been to Scotland, I assume the argument revolves around getting really drunk.
malice
Almost everyone wants to think of themselves as a good person. I think you meant "incompetence or outright delusion throughout the institution." I would throw in group-think as well.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I think you are grossly underestimating the abundance of stupidity multiplied by the question squelching authoritarian nature of law enforcement organizations. Even the most farcical instruction is more likely to be assimilated as "truth" to a bunch of people that are already somewhat programmed to follow orders from authority without too many questions. Go ahead and read about the Milgram's experiment on obedience and judge for yourself.
We're not getting out of this hole.
FTFY.
War == power grab. Civil war's not going to do squat except kill off a lot of well-intentioned but unlucky people. The ones running the show are still going to be right there doing what they normally do, except with fewer checks on their power, and possibly even handing you the gun and the bullets.
What there needs to be is a revolution, but not in the sense of fighting and guns. There needs to be an ideological revolution. The civil rights movement began it, but never really finished it. That's the kind of event that will bring about meaningful change, hopefully for the better.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
Perhaps that's a cultural thing. The article also mentions not staring at Asians (which I understand, since eye-contact means very different things in different cultures).
And did you really want to approach an Arab woman before approaching a male first?
This isn't racism, people, these are rules of thumb that look like they're attempting to help you establish relations, trust, whatever.
The rage thing I'm really not sure about. I have seen that effect in several people of Arab descent but have no idea how pervasive it is compared with other groups.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife