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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.
Outsource them. Not to India, but a private company. Do it like NSA.
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!
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.
Must be true. You are statistically significant.
It's all about the Twinkies and snowballs...
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Yeah, I am gonna go ahead and have to disagree with that. Non-statistical personal experiences are worth just about as much as opinions.
Fuck that! I'll be across the street at the burger joint ordering fries!
"That's right...I said it."
He can't help it that he lives in his mom's basement and telecommutes to work everyday, go easy on him.
Let me guess. You probably dress in a shirt with a tie and wear some clean pants. On casual Friday, you *might* switch to a polo. Guess what ? You might not be what the FBI is looking for..
I've always said, if I get wind of a national legalization of marijuana, I am going to buy a ton of stock in Frito-Lay.
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.
So what are the tech wages like in Salt Lake City?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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.
that's because all the people who DO smoke it KNOW you are a prick and thus don't mention it near you
Well damn, none of your connections on Linkedin mention their drug use? And none of your employees mentioned behavior that could have negative consequences to their employment? That certainly means that there is no drug use in your industry.
Well like I said before I can drink and handle it just fine but I don't because that's not 'professional'. Hell I'd probably work better with others if I could snag a couple brews around lunch.
The funny thing is, everyone spins faster but it's just spinning in place. No more of worth gets accomplished. For all that talk about internet speed, real accomplishments move slower than ever.
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.
I've always said, if I get wind of a national legalization of marijuana, I am going to buy a ton of stock in Frito-Lay.
Statistics from Colorado suggest that legalization has not increased consumption, and consumption has actually dropped among teenagers. So Frito-Lay may not be a good investment after all.
Well, there he goes. That ranks with "Get off my lawn" and "Old man yells at clouds".
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.
Not really. I have a beer at lunch once in a while. I do so in plain view of my boss. The way some of you guys describe jobs, I really wonder why you don't leave. You're in a technical field, jobs really aren't that hard to find. Take a pay cut, go work for a startup, get more freedom. Still a ton of work and insane hours, but you're not going to get your boss writing you up for an official warning from HR because you had a beer during lunch.
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".
Holy shit, tomorrow?? Yeah, I wouldn't blame them for firing you in that case, I would too. The guy you're responding to said a couple of drinks, not get plastered and blow the afternoon off. Somehow I think if you instead texted back, "sorry, I'm currently at lunch. I'll get to it as soon as I'm back in the office," it wouldn't be that big of a deal. It's still a workday, dude.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
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 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?
and his co-workers probably know about Urineluck or other "fake urine" products...unless someone is standing there watching you piss it's pretty easy to use something else and show "clean"...
Maybe we can discuss this over a beer?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Duuuude..
and his co-workers probably know about Urineluck or other "fake urine" products...unless someone is standing there watching you piss it's pretty easy to use something else and show "clean"...
indeed l0n3s0m3phr34k , i use it for a govt contract i have LOL.. works a treat even if they stand on the toilet near you... i have it inside my underwear , which heats it to body heat and then when it comes time to pee... it looks like i am just having a piss.... easily done.
however Captain Bollocks is probably the company snitch so, again, it's not something he'd know about..lol
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?
Sounds like a trap to nab a whole bunch of pot smokers imho.
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.
Must be true. You are statistically significant.
At a young age I learned to read beyond the words of humans. Frequently the ignorant will have valid points when they talk on subjects even if they are unable to speak on the pertinent issue with the nuance it requires.
I wrote my first wireframe 3D game while stoned. I hadn't been taught trig yet so I invented vector math independently after discovering what you'd call the "unit circle" by drawing a radiant diagram of line slope ratios represented in decimal form; Ultimately I ended up creating the equivalent to sin(), cos() and dot() functions because I didn't know what those were useful for (seriously 'online' documentation sucks sans Internet). It was one of the most productive nights of my young life. I doubt I'd have come to the conclusions about connectedness between the mathematic properties in geometry with just a knowledge of linear equations, a glorified graphing calculator, and no mind expanding chemicals. The next school year I realized there was no such thing as Genius. I couldn't understand the reverence my teacher had for these dead dudes: If a stoned kid could discover in a single night much of what took Pythagoras decades to do when confronted with the same problem spaces, then maybe we're just teaching kids wrong... I digress.
We do have a bit of research which found that downers are less common among Hackers. We typically don't like things that make us stupid or slow. Today's Marijuana is very potent compared to the 70's or even 90's, so many Hackers tend to shy away from what I would call an overdose (meaning above recommended, the term does not imply lethal). IMHO, a brownie shouldn't put you out of commission; Eat herbal confections responsibly. However, for those that Marry Jane doesn't dance with in 'detrimental' ways it's not uncommon to do some light buzzed hacking sometimes with surprisingly clever results (especially for harder problems). Indeed, after I woke the next afternoon I was refreshed and amazed at my output. I was only confounded by a single block of dense hand optimized code with only the comment, // Refactored symbiotic slope system to remove branching. Whether such "here be dragons" comments in code should be taken as quite literal statements or if they arise from the ceremonial chemistry itself is still a great mystery each code-fu master must overcome for themselves. Mine turned out to be matrix math sans matrix idiom.
Think about it: Hackers like exploiting systems for interesting or clever results; Drugs are the tools we hack organic computers with... Well, that and tDCS, but the latter may blow your fuses before our stem-cell and n.net replacements are ready. As with even alcohol, caffeine or self modifying instructions: Moderation is the key when dealing in any form of computer altering substance.
Now reconsider the GP's post: Here is someone who has since the early 90's never heard of anyone enjoying recreational mind expanding chemicals in programming. However, when we polled Usenet via trial balloon that's not what we found at all among hackers. Consider that the corporate-clone workplace strongly filters against non-authoritarian approved drug use with the help of the state. The environment itself even hackers find somewhat hostile. Consider that many people sacrifice their pleasures if these are made to cause their livelihood risk. Consider that Hackers do have ways of defeating many unjust social systems such as these. Consider that we may be letting some great minds slip through the cracks for no other reason than a form of Orwellian thought control. Even consider that GP is posting AC and propagating anti-drug propaganda, just as we've seen since the 60's and 70's. With a bit of context even a seemingly dumb comment can stir up the probability matrix quite well. The trick is not to assume anything absolutely or concretely,
You let humans operate heavy machinery on this planet?! That's insane!
Some of this depends on what field you're in. I know some sales guys who do 90% of their business over martinis at a posh bar. They're more likely to get to go enjoy a liquid lunch, with management approval.
However, in other parts of the world this is not uncommon. It all depends on where you work and what the culture is
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
Do your non-smoking cow-orkers have good emotional skills and cope with stress well?
How much do you know about what they do evenings and weekends? If you're just counting the dysfunctional ones as potheads you might miss quite a few. I'd call this likely selection bias.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
You are talking about hackers, who as a group are well know for exploiting holes and flaws in systems to get to outcomes that they desire. And then you mention drug tests that you have not seen failed by these hackers. But you have really just shown yourself to be an narrow focused, non-curious, non-hacker yourself. It does't take much research to discover how easy it is to pass a drug test even having smoked recently. Hackers would be the first group I would think of as one that would be particularly prepared for such a situation, since they are typically anti-authoritarian or anti-establishment.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
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.