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FBI Need Potheads To Fight Cybercrime
An anonymous reader writes "The rate of cybercrime is growing and growing, and law enforcement is struggling to keep up. The FBI is in the process of beefing up its headcount, but they're running into a problem: many of the hackers applying for these jobs have a history of marijuana use, and the agency has a zero tolerance policy. FBI Director James Comey said, 'I have to hire a great work force to compete with those cyber criminals and some of those kids want to smoke weed on the way to the interview.' However, change may be on the horizon: Comey said the FBI is changing 'both our mindset and the way we do business.' He also encouraged job applications from former pot users despite the policy."
Wait a second, I thought potheads were worthless burnouts who will never amount to anything?
Looks like one bullshit stereotype driven war is affecting our ability to fight another bullshit stereotype driven war.
The irony is fucking killing me.
Or maybe it is unrelated to conspiracy theory bs?
Outsource them. Not to India, but a private company. Do it like NSA.
Mr. Comey also issued a more serious warning about the long term impacts of the Syrian civil war on global terrorism. He warned that when the Syrian conflict starts winding down, it would produce an outflow of hardened militants that poses a far bigger global terror threat than the outflow of militants that followed the Afghan war against the Russians in the 1980s.
Gosh, maybe all those foreign countries (like the US, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, France, Britain, Turkey, Qatar, Israel, Kuwait) should stop funding and giving weapons to those guys.
If you have to smoke weed just to make it to the interview I seriously doubt you'll be able to do the job. Some recreational usage might be fine but it you need it to just get out of your apartment to go to a job interview then you have issues and problems that should disqualify for most any job out there.
Regardless of your stance on the morality of it, maybe we just start treating one drug (MJ) like another (Alcohol or Tobacco) from a legal perspective? Contrary to Mr. Christie, Denver is a fantastic place to live, and I genuinely believe the recreational industry has improved it even more.
Physics is nothing like religion. If it was, we'd have an easier time trying to raise money!
Imagine what this will do to sales of Doritos from the vending machines at the FBI.
Look I'm all for allowing them to smoke on their own time, but I don't show up to interviews or work buzzing off of a couple bloody marys. Relax the drug screenings yes, but showing up high? That's just immature IMHO.
I've been programming professionally for just over thirty years, and in that time I got a BS in Comp Eng in 1993 and a MS in Comp Sci in 2001. I have never even seen pot. I can't remember ever hearing anyone in this field mention using it. It just isn't common in our field. Of course when I was hiring for a new janitorial position here, I couldn't find a single male that could pass the drug test so it appears to be only the uneducated that use it.
where do i apply?
Did I miss something? Even my employer doesn't do that and I hired him (ie I'm on the board of the corporation for which I work, and am the CEO, and personally I support legalization, but done condone it on the job, lol).
Do you mean as they do by all the way you can be charged with a felony, and even more controlled afterward ?
The only FBI agent I have ever known reasonably well was a scoutmaster and used his boy scout troop as couriers to deal weed. True story.
A combination of forces has pretty much made the liquid lunch history(at least in technical fields). Neoprohibitionists (MADD, which is no longer about driving, but about drinking, per se), employer paranoia about "impaired employees", etc. But the biggest factor is "internet time". There's no time for a long lunch and slow afternoon any more. Used to be, you'd get the stuff done in the morning, get it to the mail room, and the absolute soonest you'd get comments back would be a week, because it had to travel through gloom of night on the courier's appointed rounds, then they'd have to type their responses (no word processors in the early 80s: runoff and all caps on greenbar doesn't hack it for real business communications) and send them back. Now, though, you get text messages during your (working) lunch asking for a response "soonest", and somehow I think that if you texted back "sorry, getting a couple pints with the guys, get back to you tomorrow", the next text would be "we'll ship your stuff to you at the last address you had on file with HR".
I'm trying to remember the last time there was a "go out to lunch and get beer and pizza" type thing, and I'm thinking mid 80s. There might be a Friday afternoon "we got the proposal in on schedule" every 5-6 years but that's end of workweek not expected to toil afterwards.
A friend blames it all on couriers and FedEx (work all day, FedEx carries through the night, delivering in the morning at the other end), but in the 80s you still had to type the stuff out, which was generally NOT done by the engineer or technical person, but by clerical staff.
I blame more of it on the Internet and cheap PCs, which made it possible to disintermediate the whole transaction: no courier service, no typist, no graphic artist. This is BAD: most engineers are lousy copy editors and lousy graphic artists,and sorry, clip art help from Powerpoint and Word's grammar/spell checker are a bad substitute, and slower than people who are good at it.
I've got a funny story. I had to go rack some servers at Area 71 as part of the Ingram Micro services network. Or whatever they call it. I worked at WM home office before this job, and was familiar with their data centers, anyway.
Anyway, when you pull up to the security gate, you get asked for what WM calls a "RFAR number". So I was riding with my friend, and he called it a "reefer number" right into the speaker. LOL!
They were like, "Who are you with?!" And my friend was like, "I got a reefer number!". And she was so mad...
They got so pissed!!!!! LOL! True story.
NO SHIT:::: The captcha was "intercom" How does that even happen?
Hint: people will lie if a policy is both overly-strict and unenforceable. I guarantee you they have a substantial number of employees, probably even at director levels, who have used cannabis at least once in their lifetime. It wouldn't surprise me if James Corney is one of those people, but can, like, totally explain why his joint at 19 years old was okay but other peoples' use wasn't.
They just need to actually advertise for those positions.
Anyone seen the FBI recruiting for hackers?
Nope? Okay... so there's your problem.
If they're really serious they'll talk to the Pentagon about how to actually get recruitment flowing.
It requires things like "placing an ad"... in anything. And then manning the phone or email address cited.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
History is NO liar (provided it is not a govt. approved textbook)
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Only if they also controlled the substance totally that these people are dependent on. If they wanted that, making the stuff legal would be the first step.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, there he goes. That ranks with "Get off my lawn" and "Old man yells at clouds".
"He also encouraged job applications from former pot users despite the policy."
He's encouraged people to apply knowing that there is a zero chance of acceptance? No. He's saying he doesn't actually care about the rule and he's encouraging people to lie on their applications. When I was in the Navy, I worked with several people, from fry cooks to nuclear engineering officers, who were told by recruiters "Do you smoke now? No? Well then just lie and say you never smoked. We don't actually care."
Like gay marriage the prohibition of marijuana will start falling state by state. Colorado and Washington have already done so. When people see that it isn't going to be a huge disaster other states will follow suit and eventually it will become untenable to maintain the prohibition. It's just a matter of time.
so they have more names to add to the 'keep an eye on' and/or 'ok to violate all constitutional rights' lists
The FBI is an organization full of closet cases, and they have been ever since that notorious drag queen, J. Edgar Hoover was around. Repressed homosexuality is the motivation behind the majority of their hare-brained incompetence.
So what are the tech wages like in Salt Lake City?
Not half bad.
May 2013 Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates --- Salt Lake City, UT
Which areas are the likely ''up and comers'' in the next decade? These are generally places that have been building up their tech capacity over the past several decades, and seem to be reaching critical mass. One place following a strong trajectory is Salt Lake City, No. 4 on our list, which has enjoyed a 31% spurt in tech employment over the past 10 years. Some of this can be traced to large-scale expansion in the area by top Silicon Valley companies such as Adobe, Electronic Arts and Twitter.
These companies have flocked to Utah for reasons such as lower taxes, a more flexible regulatory environment, a well-educated, multilingual workforce and spectacular nearby natural amenities. Perhaps most critical of all may be housing prices: Three-quarters of Salt Lake area households can afford a median-priced house, compared to 45% in Silicon Valley and about half that in San Francisco.
The Best Cities For Tech Jobs [May 2012]
Wait a second, I thought potheads were worthless burnouts who will never amount to anything?
You'll see only success stories posted here. Not a word from those whose careers were crippled or cut short by alcohol or drugs.
History is merely subjective, and thus biased, interpretation of past events.
Assuming you've got a track record as a top-notch white hat hacker and security guy and you had some unique experience/skill mix that the FBI really felt they needed, would they just kind of put up with it, maybe/especially if you lived in a state like Colorado or had a medical card in California?
How do companies like Apple/Oracle/Google/MS/Amazon handle it in California now? My first hand experience and everything I've read in the media makes pot seem pretty well accepted in California and there's certainly a counter-culture kind of attitude among a lot of technology people. If you get recruited to Google because you're something special, do they give you a piss test and then tell you they won't hire you?
I honestly don't know many people who smoke pot... especially not IT kinds.
But coke, MDMA, and other 'harder' drunks aren't at all uncommon - what's the policy there?
Is the FBI really turning away applicants that, aside from being potheads, meet all the mental and physical requirements? Every pothead I've ever known could barely hold a job, wasn't in the best of shape and didn't think highly of law enforcement. Sure, that's just my anecdotal evidence, but it logically stands to reason that if you're successful and in decent physical condition, you probably prefer real world outdoor stimulus over getting high, sitting on dirty couch, playing Xbox and stuffing your face full of cheesy poofs.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
Maybe we can discuss this over a beer?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Duuuude..
I know someone who tried joining the FBI years ago, as a mechanic. He had tried a few things during college, even though he hadn't used in years, and he didn't make it through the interview process. This was probably 10-15 years ago.
Shortly after that, I had heard they had increased the limit to 7 years, so he gave up, rather than trying to just wait out the time ... so three years might've already been relaxing the rules.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Perhaps now you see why secret agencies like the NSA and FBI are detrimental. Their "Cybercrime" is full of skiddies who'll do anything for a paycheck and likely are the same folks who privately rail against such mechanisms. Think about it. How many of the ones they hired that weren't potheads were spies from "enemy" states instead?
Fraternal Brotherhood of Inhalers.
"The F.B.I.?"
"Yes. The F.B.I."
"...F.B.I.'s not here, man."
Seriously... Ever see a stoner get violent? Many drunks get violent, yet alcohol is legal. Weed is not the same as hard drugs, and more people than you think indulge (or have indulged) in the stuff.
Besides, if you use a vaporiser, it's not that harmful, and I don't think weed kills more brain cells than beer.
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The depth of my lack of sympathy for the FBI on this issue would float a navy.
So why not let pot users into the office at FBI, CIA and other branches of goverment. Hopefully they would be a bit more relaxed ;)
While the Reagan Administration really wanted to get most of Corporate America doing that, as a tool in the War On Drugs, it was hardly universal, partly to allow companies to go way overboard without the government having to take responsibility.
Cygnus Solutions, a company that did open-source gcc and other GNU work, had a contract supporting the state of California with compilers, so they were required to have a corporate drug policy and have it posted up on the same board as the minimum wage notices, etc. There was no requirement for the policy to be anything specific, including testing, and the company eventually decided on an official policy that if you bring illegal drugs to the workplace, you have to offer to share them with your coworkers, and posted it. I'm not sure how often the policy was actually followed, but I know some obvious people to ask :-)
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
You know, im smoking marijuana for 30 years. I do not have any problem at all about... what are we talking about ?
My coworkers that smoke pot regularly have stunted emotional skills, don't cope with stress well, and there's no point in scheduling a meeting with them after lunch and their trip to the parking structure.
To pay people who aren't stoners what they are worth.
There are no prostitutes in Japan.
I bet i make more than you and i smoke every day and have never had to do a single piss test over the last 6 years I've been in the industry. 3 times the average salary for my area. I'll also out program you while smoking a blunt but I digress. You don't know any pot smokers and you don't know what they are capable of because they've all figured out you are an ignorant cunt.
Notice that the bulk of comments from coders who used marijuana for a long period of time are rife with typos, poor sentence structure, grammar errors, and aren't entirely coherent? There are literally no posts from self proclaimed drug users that I'd describe as being completely coherent.
We know THC causes a permanent shift in the density and distribution of gray matter in the brain. Maybe that's what we're seeing here?
How does this extend to programming? More typos? Strange variable naming conventions? I wonder.
Here is there problem right here... You go to the FBI Cyber Security Team and click to apply for a Special Agent and get this:
THE FBI SPECIAL AGENT APPLICATION IS CURRENTLY CLOSED.
THE NEXT SPECIAL AGENT POSTING DATES ARE YET TO BE DETERMINED.
https://fbijobs.gov/032.asp
Probably not going to get many applications if you don't let anyone apply.
I never signed up for it. Now. by law, I can't work for the FBI.
BUT, an illegal drug user is cool???
Is he going to encourage job applications from people who did not sign up for the draft?
Where was the FBI when harmless potheads were having their lives ruined over the last 70 some odd years? Now you need them, well fuck that!
And I wrote the virtual machine you three are simulated on. :-)
Dang that time travel bug again; I thought I had fixed that...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
http://www.phibetaiota.net/201...
"This essay discusses how the USA's security clearance process (mainly related to ensuring secrecy) may have a counter-productive negative effect on the USA's national security by reducing "cognitive diversity" among security professionals."
This pot smoking issue is just one more way...
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
if you hack and smoke pot, don't work for the FBI
If you have even the slightest amount of moral integrity at all, then don't work for the FBI.