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FBI Says It Will Hire No One Who Lies About Illegal Downloading
wabrandsma writes with this excerpt from The State Hornet, the student newspaper at Sacramento State On Monday, Sacramento State's Career Center welcomed the FBI for an informational on its paid internship program where applications are now being accepted. One of the highly discussed topics in the presentation was the list of potential traits that disqualify applicants. This list included failure to register with selective services, illegal drug use including steroids, criminal activity, default on student loans, falsifying information on an application and illegal downloading music, movies and books. FBI employee Steve Dupre explained how the FBI will ask people during interviews how many songs, movies and books they have downloaded because the FBI considers it to be stealing. During the first two phases of interviews, everything is recorded and then turned into a report. This report is then passed along to a polygraph technician to be used during the applicant's exam, which consists of a 55-page questionnaire. If an applicant is caught lying, they can no longer apply for an FBI agent position. (Left un-explored is whether polygraph testing is an effective way to catch lies.)
The polygraph, along with IQ tests, are a very American forms of superstition.
I suspect this will be quietly dropped in the near future when they see their supply of young recruits dwindle to nothing.
The FBI is a federal law enforcement agency. Their mission is to enforce federal law.
Am I out of consideration if I refer to the polygraph as 'truth dowsing' while it is being administered? How about asking if it can detect witches?
The FBI and other TLAs are constantly engaged in illegal downloading of the private information of Americans. How ironic that they're so anxious to recruit only people who have never committed the very types of "crimes" they're being hired to do. What, do they find it cheaper to train beginners than to hire someone already experienced in the job? (I wish this post was purely a joke.)
I thought polygraphs were most notable for giving a lot of false positives.
That's really not such a bad characteristic for security clearances.
They are used not to detect truth or lies, they are used as a tool of intimidation. It is a high tech corollary to the bright light shone in the face of someone being grilled in the police interrogation room.
The only problem is that there is no federal law against downloading. There is about copying and distributing which whoever offers it for download would definitely be doing but no law against you downloading it. All the court cases you see about it stem from the illegal distribution.
The article says "illegal" downloading. I wonder how many applicants will answer no because they never shared anything and be disqualified because their sweep of meta data indicated otherwise? I wonder how many will admit to illegally downloading who has not according to the letter of the law? And since it is a government employer, I wonder what the constitutional implications are if they have a trove of data which was meant to catch terrorist that they use in validating your eligibility for employment.
So basically the FBI is only hiring people over the age of 50?
In my experience, about 99% of videos on Youtube and images on Google image search have been illegally published without the rights holder's permission, so I guess they have to further restrict their applicants - good luck finding recruits that have never used those - maybe try the Amish?
Anyone who doesn't understand the function of the FBI is a naive idiot.
The FBI exists to preserve the power of those in power.
The FBI doesn't give a damn about an average person.
Anyone who would work for such an organization deserves
the most extreme derision possible. I'd shit on you if could.
> Of course, if all they want are upper middle-class drones who follow every rule that has ever been made, just because it's a rule, then I suppose this is effective.
You can drop the "upper middle class" part, as this is about following the law. Full stop.
The FBI and especially the intelligence services will tell you that they very much try to hire people who follow the law and other rules. In some cases, being sloppy about following the rules can have huge consequences. So they lool for military people and people from certain social groups who culturally tend to follow the rules.
The irony of that is obvious.
As to "just because they are rules" -
Not that we need to debate it, and you'll probably never give up your excuse for taking stuff without paying for it, but my family and coworkers have been greatly harmed by the seachange shift to a culture of most people taking what they want illegally rather than paying the 99 cents to buy it from those of us who create it. The rule that what I create with my own hands os mine to give away, trade, or sell exists for a very good reason. Yes, it does mean that app or song I spent a year working on will cost you a whopping $1, but that's just how it is. (Coming from a guy whose daughter would be MUCH better taken care of if everyone who uses my software regularly had paid a dollar for it. Buying another candy bar is more important than doing the right thing, though. )
Their first mission is to protect the constitution, from all threats foreign or domestic. This includes the part of the Constitution where copyright is for "a limited time" and for the purpose of "promoting the progress of science and the useful arts". Maybe they should exclude from the hiring pool anyone who owns copyright for an absurd period of time, or who uses copyright or patents to prevent progress?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
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Default on student loans? Sickening.
Then they won't hire you.
They may hire you if you did something illegal and are honest about it. They will not hire you if you did something illegal and lied about it.
The FBI doesn't want its agents to lie, or default on student loans (the latter is often simply a matter of economics, not honesty), but yet the Snowden documents reveal that the FBI commits perjury in federal court to hide the true, illegal sources of information they got from the NSA. Described here, http://www.alexaobrien.com/sec... Search for "Parallel Construction"
AccountKiller
No, you misunderstand. The FBI is only hiring people who can lie on a polygraph test and not get caught...and those few who are not interested enough in music, games, or movies to bother to download them, legally or otherwise,
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Just means the FBI will only be hiring people who are good at lying about wrongdoing. Which is probably really more useful and what they want in the long run.
But it's not what they want. You know what the word is for "guy who can blithely lie his way through a polygraph?" It's "spy."
Polygraphs are pseudoscientific bullshit, but the only people they weed out are the honest ones. I know you're worried about abusive/sociopathic cops, and that's one problem. But if I if I can switch to Fedspeak, for a moment - the risk isn't that the FBI's recruitment policies select for sociopaths, it's that they select for double agents. Moronic ideologue non-threats like AQ/IS and domestic terrorists like the Sovereign Citizen derpers might not make it past this screening, but they're practically begging FSB and PLA to infiltrate them. It's assinine, it's self-destructive, and it doesn't even serve the larger gains of the FBI, just of the bureaucrats who have a vested interest in the revolving door between the IC and polygraph-reliant clearance-processing industry.
I believe the federal standard is "did not inhale".
The law of "don't talk to cops about anything".
If you tell a police officer you smoked pot last week, whaaaaaat law did you just break?
None yet. If you're in your car, you have now given him "probable cause" to search your vehicle. In some states, if there is one seed, you're under arrest. Never talk to the police.
I see Ray. Interesting that you can't respond to my argument and have to resort to critiquing a spelling error.
AccountKiller
Nope, the person offering it for download is making the copy and distributing it.
A copy is defined in the Copyright Act (17 USC 101) as a material object in which a copy is fixed. A hard drive is a material object, a flash drive is a material object, RAM is a material object. But data coming in over the network is not a material object. The downloader causes that data to be written to some sort of storage medium on his end, thereby making a new copy. The person on the other end of the connection is in trouble too, but it is clear in the statute, and settled in the caselaw, that downloading can be infringing.
No more so than if you were to use a tape record to copy music from the radio or a VCR to copy a movie or TV show.
That's like saying that murdering someone with a gun is no more murder than murdering them with a knife or with poison. All of the things you mention are also infringing, if of copyrighted works and without permission. There may be applicable exceptions, but there just as easily might not be.
decisions like the Sony Beta Max case would probably bar cases against most copying that didn't involve distribution or public performances
It didn't. In fact, if you read the Sony case, you'll see that the Court expected that not all home taping of TV would even be a fair use. All that mattered was that there was enough possibility of VCR recording being legal sometimes that copyright didn't require that the technology be banned altogether.
For instance, you walking down the street singing Lady Gaga tunes or listening to a radio playing it in which others could hear would not be a violation unless someone paid you to do it or you were advertising something and using that to attract attention or similar.
It's a public performance, and would be prima facie infringing.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.