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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.)
Hopefully at some point in time the FBI will realize that their mission shouldn't be to protect corporate rights, but to protect rights for the individual citizens.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
The polygraph, along with IQ tests, are a very American forms of superstition.
I mean it exists in a legal grey water, I think. I'm talking about sites like pornhub.
PS: I don't reply to ACs.
I suspect this will be quietly dropped in the near future when they see their supply of young recruits dwindle to nothing.
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?
Guess they can't reach out to the NSA for candidates.
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.)
Then they won't hire you.
I guess with criteria like that, the FBI isn't going to have a cybercrimes division. Awesome. Seriously though, where the hell are they going to find people with IT skills who match these ridiculous criteria. The definitely won't be pulling the best and brightest of computer hackers.
I thought polygraphs were most notable for giving a lot of false positives.
That's really not such a bad characteristic for security clearances.
Lie detectors themselves have been proven time and time again to be utterly unreliable in actually detecting lies.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
... is whether "piracy" is actually stealing much less criminal.
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?
That was my thought. They're going to make themselves even MORE out of touch with even MORE of the various American subcultures.
I can see the fnords!
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.
Over 50 and straight edged boy scout
I downloaded a TV show that was on Canadian and did not show up on US till about 1 year later.
> 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. )
Of course, a brief, public overview is going to lean towards zero tolerance. There are plenty of legal grey areas, and most folk aren't fully versed in copyright law nor would they knowingly violate such laws even if they might casually do so unknowingly. People in law enforcement know full well that absolute purity in the eyes of the law is very rare, and also strange. If they have a large enough applicant pool that they can take the rare ones who are both exceptionally qualified and squeaky clean, that's great, but otherwise I'm sure they'll bend a bit.
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I wonder if the FBI would hire Jesus when he comes back. They are hiring no one but saints.
they will probably hire you. it's like a military security clearance. they don't like it when you lie to them, but they are OK if you admit wrongdoing.
Don't lie then.
When I joined the military I admitted to occasional drug use. I still got accepted and went on to be a reactor operator on a submarine with a secret clearance.
Integrity is very important and some places put that higher than other characteristics. If you are willing to lie about downloading music, what else are you willing to lie about. Where to YOU draw the line on what is acceptable to lie about and what is not. They choose ZERO lies, at least on an initial interview? Separately we can argue the merits and accuracy of a lie detector test, the general purpose and function of the FBI, and even the meaning of life but none of that changes the fact they don't want people willing to lie. I'd like to apply that test to all elected government officials myself but...
From a reliable source I can also say that you can fail out from reasonable mistaken discrepancies. You see, tbe length of tbe questionarre is no coincidence. They dont want you to be able to recall what you put down as an answer originally and if you originally said you had moved 4 times in the last 10 years and during the poly you remembered a 5th move, and simply just forgotten originally, and you later say 5.... will easily disqualify you. Their method is flawed and im sure they've disqualified potentially amazing would-be agents over ridiculously stupid technicalities.
This program sounds like a bluff to me. You are correct in that no one would meet the hiring criteria.
Default on student loans? Sickening.
Over 50 and straight edged boy scout
I'm over 50 and used to be a boy scout. I don't smoke, drink very moderately, help little old ladies across the street, recently came to the assistance of a young woman who was in a physical altercation with her boyfriend (which turned out to be her attacking him, but I didn't know that 'til I got involved) and just today used my pocket knife (which I carry because I was a boy scout) to help an elderly man deflate a beach ball he and his grandson had been playing with (by prying out the extremely stuck plug, not stabbing it.)
And I illegally downloaded a movie last night (there were extenuating circumstances, but still...)
So I'd say the FBI is going to be restricted to Amish who were too wasted during their rumspringa to download anything.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
"Are we including porn? Many, many terabytes."
Belief is the currency of delusion.
They will just not US citizens. This rules are obviously written with H1B's in mind. :P
I joke....but seriously when confronted with obviously illegal orders, who is more likely to say "fuck you, that is illegal" and then become a whistle blower A) a smart 'snowden' US citizen or b) "call me sam" from India. Now which would the US gov be more interested in having in their cyber crimes division? Tinfoil hatish, but its the only thing that makes sense with such BS questions that are obviously meant to make it virtually impossible for any US born to 'pass'.
Copyright infringement has been criminal for a while now--they just very rarely treat it criminally because they have limited resources and it would usually be ridiculous to treat it criminally. Basically you have a felony for what should get a parking ticket.
Basically, the FBI doesn't hire people who are qualified for the job - only people who have done nothing interesting in their lives.
As such, expect the FBI to be several steps behind actual criminals, because criminal behavior disqualifies you for their recruitment.
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Apple and Amazon will be surprised to hear that downloading music is stealing. On the other hand, it's fine with the FBI if I lend my backup drive to friends so they can copy my complete collection of music, since clearly this isn't downloading?
How many really technologically savvy people have NEVER "illegally" downloaded some form of music or movie? The FBI will have none of those people working for them. While at the same time the next article on Slashdot is about yet another network intruded into for the theft of financial information. Way to go team USA.
They didn't say they won't hire people who illegally downloaded things. They said they won't hire people who lie about it, all police forces work the same way.
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.
Who the fuck would ever want to apply for an FBI job? Oh ya, anally insane people.
I have just reported your admission of copyright infringement to the FBI. Enjoy federal prison.
if you want a conservative monoculture.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
shoot, thought everyone already knew how to beat them?
(butt "clenching" technique, anyone?)
How much money did I take from the RIAA and MPAA by downloading?
thegodmovie.com - watch it
they will probably hire you. it's like a military security clearance. they don't like it when you lie to them, but they are OK if you admit wrongdoing.
Except that admitting a crime to your military security clearance interviewer is different than admitting a crime to the FBI, they being law enforcement. I wouldn't volunteer that you smoked pot, either.
Downloading free music is perfectly legal. Apple just claimed that 23 million people downloaded a free U2 album. That's perfectly legal. I've probably downloaded about 500 songs that were free. Legally. Quite a few books and audiobooks as well.
There are tons of free books at http://www.gutenberg.org/ and tons of free audiobooks at librivox.org . JSB's complete works for organ at http://www.blockmrecords.org/b... .
I would have hoped that the FBI would know the difference between "free" and "illegal".
I know it's supposed to be off topic, but I'd take one look at their polygraph and wonder how much of a kickback Hoover got for deciding the FBI was going to buy such voodoo and why they are still using such useless shit.
The lying doesn't seem to matter if it's at the top.
Well, there are no more communists, and pot's legal. The FBI, in its zeal to limit its hiring pool to only the most conformist and least-adept, had to find some sort of excuse to keep tomorrow's cybersecurity professionals out of its ranks!
What they call "piracy" or "illegal downloading" is properly called copyright infringement (I don't think they refer to happenings in Somalia when they refer to "piracy"). The copyright infringement defines the infringement as "unauthorized distribution." So, if you distribute the copyright material without the proper authorization from the copyright holder you're committing a copyright infringement. Now, downloading itself is not the distribution, so downloading cannot be illegal (can, but not currently). It's the same idea as you walking into a grocery store to buy napkins and the store didn't have the proper clearance from the napkin manufacturer to sell those napkins, so the store might be in violation, but not you -- the purchaser. Same with downloading. It becomes murky with cases where files get uploaded at the same time as they get downloaded. But I don't expect the average user to know such details. But if you're just downloading, you're not committing the copyright infringement.
There's no such thing as "illegal download"
You're right, when you download a file, the original copy disappears in a cloud of smoke. You've deprived its owner of his copy. That is theft.
Or worse, if you would never have bought a copy in the first place, then you've stolen the profit the media company would never have made. That is theft.
Of course if you mention viewing the movie to someone such that they would not have considered it otherwise and THEY buy a copy, then you've deprived the media company of a sale. That is theft.
It's important to pay for all copies so that media companies can keep getting rich and not pay the artists because the media companies hold all the rights and make all the money. That is theft.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
That continued use of polygraph testing continues to be tolerated without these agencies is beyond amazing. Is this the 21st century or the 11th?
Shameful employment at FBI is limited to those lacking principals enough to allow themselves to submit to whims of mysticism and voodoo.
> Most piracy does not represent lost sales, but sales that never would have happened.
That's true, based on my knowledge of tens of thousands of content producers over the last fifteen years. That is, however, irrelevant to their take home pay. Suppose that 90% of piracy is cases that would not have purchased. The other 10% is people who would have - the producers income stream. What matters is that people who used to buy no longer do, the pirate/steal. People who used to buy one album per year now take twenty albums and pay for none. The 19 you take that you wouldn't have paid for don't matter much. It's the one you would have paid for but no longer do that matters. When is the last time you bought an album, or some porn? Sure, most of the content you consume now you didn't consume in 2000, that just costs bandwidth. But in 2000 you probably paid for one web site or one album. In 2014, you probably didn't pay for any. Instead you used pornhub (mostly stolen content) and unlawfully downloaded music. When most people don't pay for your product, it's hard to make a living.
> In fact I would bet that piracy tends to make money for less well-known producers of content.
I know one case where piracy worked as branding, and the lady who produced the content. I know of thousands where it didn't. Ten years ago, if your marketing was poor but the branding on the product itself was good, piracy could make you money by getting your name out there. These days, 20,000 will pirate it and zero will buy it. Getting your name out doesn't do any good when almost nobody pays for things they want.
Seriously, have you ever met anyone technical who hasn't downloaded at least one song/movie/whatever?
Do you really need reason for beer? Wingman Brewers
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
FBI faces a critical and acute shortage of personnel as policies have limited the list to only Amish candidates
One of my former bosses said "you can get good people, available people and people with no police record. Pick two"
Time and experience has shown me that "good people" and "people with no police record" has become more and more synonymous as more and more inane laws are being pushed into existence. You don't get "good" in this field if you're learning it from text books. Ponder this for a moment: Malware analysis consists to a rather big portion of looking at decompiled code someone else wrote and quickly identifying specific sections, often involving reverse engineering some kind of encryption or obfuscation. Now where do you think you would almost invariably have to develop that skill set. Little hint: It ain't really a very legal activity.
Most of the "good" security people I know didn't get there by choosing it as a career and studying. They got there because they ... well, wanted to accomplish something.
And if they're good at it, they never got caught doing it...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
This is a good thing. Pretty soon there will be no FBI. The office may exist, but they won't be able to STAFF it.
Didn't the FBI just have to relax it's restrictions against pot smokers, in order to attract the talent they need? And are not illegal downloaders more common?
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
A general trait among people. Bill Clinton "I didn't inhale" -> Impeach the liar! George Bush "I was a stupid kid when I used cocain" -> Elect him, what could possibly go wrong?
What a dumb as shit policy. That's almost as bad as the days they wouldn't hire anyone who smoked pot. When you fix those kinds of absolutes you start selecting for a specific personality type that's not always going to make the best agent.
It's so backwards it defies logic.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
If you tell a police officer you smoked pot last week, whaaaaaat law did you just break?
Federal Bureau of Ignorants
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The NSA has a position for you! And the CIA, DEA, IRS, FB... oh wait, not during election season.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The law of munchiesdynamics?
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
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.
Burn in hell, you copyright violating scum!
blank media tax
now that's stealing
This is how they will keep the FBI ideologically pure in the sense that the entire agency will be on the side of the MPAA/RIAA.
Or people too poor to afford a computer or people too computer illiterate to use a computer. Good luck finding those cyber criminals.
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 am over 50 and an Eagle Scout. I downloaded warez over a Hayes 2400 modem. Most of the Eagle Scouts I know enjoy the Good Herb. I was thinking of a good retirement career. Maybe the FBI would suit.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
I believe the federal standard is "did not inhale".
eh, even spies are OK, as long as they don't get caught. Or if they do get caught, the FBI isn't blamed for letting them in. It's government. The most important tenet is CYA. It's valuable to have people who can convince others that they've done everything right "by the book" and have done no wrong.
But wait a minute...
Say you got mp3s legally from Grooveshark but decade later you found out those mp3s were not legal, but you were under the understanding they were.
Or for my time, when Napster first came out it was legal, Dave Grohl uploaded tracks to Napster and even bragged about their band using it on the HBO Dennis Miller show.
But it became "retroactively" illegal
FBI is horseshit
Will bitcoin militia to make ice,nsa, fbi, cia, go boom
Thank you for doing the right thing.
I don't like some of the things the MPAA and RIAA have done. I do like Pulp Fiction and I Like Big Butts. The song, not the butts. I want Hollywood to make more big movies with Samuel L Jackson, and I don't want to get ripped off. What to do? I think the Netflix/ Hulu / Amazon Prime model along with the Red Box model can fund big movies and also provide good value to the consumer. So my message to Hollywood is this - of you want my money, you'll have to get it by putting your movies on Netflix or Red Box. That way I get good value and you get money to use to make your next movie. I won't let you rip me off, I will work with you only when you give me good value for my money.
The law of "don't talk to cops about anything".
Just how much piracy goes on inside the FBI?
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.
Polygraphs are legally inadmissible in just about every first-world country. Except, strangely, the US. Honestly, it's at least fifty-years since most places realised it was a load of hokum.
It's bollocks. The fact that the FBI even *entertain* the idea shows that they are all about the *appearance* of security to the general populace - while being laughed at by those they are supposed to be detecting. You might as well tell me that their interview process involves reading your palm - it's really that ridiculous. That you don't see this is probably even sadder.
Honestly, America... polygraphs are voodoo. Like homeopathy, spiritualists and psychics, there is ZERO evidence that it means anything, no matter what expert claims to run it or what equipment they claim to use. You cannot detect lies. Not even with MRI's and all kinds of equipment scanning your head.
Hell, we can't even control a cursor on a screen accurately when we focus all our efforts on doing so and concentrate like mad. How the fuck are we supposed to detect the inclination of an internal thought by a bloke sitting across the room looking at how clenched your arse is?
I fully agree, terms are ridiculous. I'd cut them dramatically if I were a veteran senator. Unfortunately, I'm a lowly programmer, and my customers mere photographers.
Ten years ago, gnutella and similar were easier than even just filling out the payment form for each purchase. Today, Amazon has a very nice, easy store with one-click purchase and most digital goods cost a dollar. It's actually EASIER to use the app store on my phone than it is to get stuff illegally. There are dozens of good stores to choose from. You mentioned tracking- Google is in the ad business, and logs the heck out of advertising- related data. Apple is in the hardware business. They don't much care about the data.
Personally, I choose to use Google products, fully understanding that they have database rows for ad viewer #8943384683783 (me). I don't care too much, partly because I understand they aren't a) tracking b) me. Their computer is logging purchase and viewing history and correlating a viewer number. They aren't interested in me as a person, just a purchase history. If that's not your thing, maybe you'll prefer Amazon, or another store.
They are only hiring confessed music/tv pirates now?
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
This may be the most hillarious demonstration of slashdotters inability to read and correctly parse article summaries, ever.
The FBI is barring you from employment for lying to them. The summary mentions downloading, incidentally. Every comment here is about how the FBI shouldnt punish you for downloading.
Somewhere between the screen and the commentors, there is a lack of comprehension.
As a matter of fact, agents of both the FBI and various intelligence entities were at our offices just recently. Remember on 9/11 the guy who whispered into Bush's ear? He was just here talking about how they tried to reform the intelligence agencies to cooperate better and share information about threats. (There is a good reason the CIA wasn't allowed to share information with the FBI before, but that seemed less important just after 9/11).
Congress didn't follow the law (Constitution) when they passed laws allowing the NSA crap, and the politicians and the friends they appointed didn't follow the law. I said they like to HIRE people who follow the law, not BE people who follow the law. If you're APPOINTED to head the agency, you're probably a weasely political type. If you're HIRED as an agent or analyst, you probably learned to follow the rules closely while in the military or certain other organizations. Loose lips sink ships.
My IQ is 54 points higher.... and I am Young Earth Creationist.
This is probably not the point you want to make while arguing that IQ tests are accurate....and the fact that you did make it only compounds the irony.
Never understood the polygraph requirement when entering a position where you are expected to keep tight lips about their secrets. How does it make sense to hire people eagerly willing to divulge their secrets and then expect them to keep your secrets.
I applied to the CIA when I was looking at finishing grad school about 4 years back. As with the FBI, one of the things they mentioned was illegal downloading, of which I had done quite a bit while in college. I mean, we're talking hundreds of films, thousands of TV episodes, thousands of audio tracks, both foreign and domestic for all of those, from any number of decades, genres, and budget sizes.
I was upfront with them about it during a pre-screening interview held at my school's campus. I actually brought it up with them and asked if it'd be a problem. They indicated it wouldn't be, and formally invited me to fill out a proper application with them so that they could advance me through the process.
I answered truthfully regarding it on the application and any subsequent questionnaires that I had to fill out. I never got any word back regarding that specifically, but their response was to ask me to fly up to Washington D.C. for a three-day session with them, which I did.
I provided exacting details regarding my illegal downloading to the polygraph examiner at my polygraph session, as well as to anyone else who asked about it. I let them know the quantity, nature of the content, and how recently I had engaged in it. I passed the polygraph with flying colors and was told I didn't even need to come in for the second session they had scheduled since they were confident I told the truth about everything (and I had...in excruciating detail, in fact, just because I knew, being the pedant that I am, that if I left out any little detail, I really would be considering myself to be lying; as an aside, one of the other applicants I was hanging out with lied to them about the recency of his drug use and got caught in his lie).
And how did they respond to all of this? They asked me when it would be convenient to move on to the final stage of the application process (a thorough background check...which I'm confident I would have easily passed), since the folks I'd be working with were excited about bringing me onboard and wanted to keep things moving. Which is to say, the fact that I had downloaded loads of files illegally in the past clearly wasn't a problem. They let me know that it'd need to stop and that it would come up again in the every-five-years polygraph everyone working there submits to, but otherwise, they made it clear to me, both explicitly through their words and implicitly through their deeds that they really didn't have a problem with me having engaged in it at a relatively large scale in the past.
P.S. Just to state what I hope is obvious: an actual polygraph session is NOTHING like what is shown on TV (the room was well-lit, there wasn't an angry detective yelling at me, beads of sweat were not pouring from my brow, and no one was pounding on any desks). I don't want to get into a load of details, but suffice it to say, the environment was heavily controlled to eliminate external stimuli, the questions and their meanings along with the terms and their definitions were all explained in detail to me in advance, I was able to voice any misgivings I had about them to the examiner (in fact, we spent 2.5 hours of the 4 hours doing just that, since my inherent pedantry meant that I had all sorts of ideas like "well, technically I've compromised government systems when I lent a friend my password at our state university" or "I can't rule out the possibility that I unknowingly supported terrorists through a front that they're maintaining", which led to a lot of the questions getting rephrased to be prefixed by "insofar as you know" or "besides what you have disclosed here"), and the questions were all read to me over and over and over again in even, metered tones that were about as un-aggressive as you can imagine.
The FBI is going to be restricted to people with a particular set of biases. It's likely an effective way to control the shape of FBI enforcement focus for years to come.
I see Ray. Interesting that you can't respond to my argument and have to resort to critiquing a spelling error.
AccountKiller
Nutmeg is a gateway spice.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
App stores may make a big difference, by making it so easy to pay a dollar. Before, just the hassle of filling out the payment meant it was rarely worth it to sell anything online for less than $30. (There's a reason that 99.9% of paid web sites are $29.95. Lower cost doesn't increase sales due to the hassle of paying.)
After 15 years programming for the web, and millions of people using my software, including Slashdot.org, I ended up having to take that 8-5 job. An 8-5 with a government agency. Probably few people on Slashdot would say that having a computer security person end up working for a government agency is a good thing.
You took the stuff I made , without my permission. That makes you a crook.
My expectation was that people who wanted the little bit of software I didn't opened n source would pay the small price I charged for it, not rip me off.
Do you shoplift, and justify it by saying "the store owner expected me to pay for what I got from him, but times have changed"?
You're simply low life scum, simple as that. I kind of wish I had put a trojaned copy of my software on the torrents for guys like you.
I'm not doing it anymore, not programming mostly open source software for general use. I'm no longer contributing to the Linux kernel. Instead, I now work for a government agency.
After 15 years programming for the web, and millions of people using my software, including Slashdot.org, I ended up having to take that 8-5 job. An 8-5 with a government agency. Probably few people on Slashdot would say that having a computer security person end up working for a government agency is a good thing. Really, since you took wanted to use my work, you'd have been better off paying for what you took than ripping me off, turning me bitter, and having me apply me security expertise to advance the government's projects rather than projects around open source.
The thing is, Vemont, you're probably a brilliant person, but (literally) don't know the very first thing about copyright . It's the right to make copies. That's like the first sentence in the "Introduction to Copyright" pamphlet, and it"s news to you. Again, you're probably very good at what you do. Clearly, what you do is not copyright law. Arguing copyright law with you would be like arguing international monetary policy with a second grader.
Your "argument" is a good example of the expression "not even wrong". If you're not familiar with the expression you may want to Google it.
So you can honestly answer "no" to whatever dumbass question they ask you.
The expense is staggering for a placebo so there's more to it than that. Somebody must really believe that shit or still be making money out of it. Wouldn't it be funny if it's a vector for corruption like the Rapiscan things were, and it's used as a prop to catch those copyright violators.
Not enough, obviously. Download some more so they'll go bankrupt. I can just see their faces as all the money magically vanishes from their wallets!
If the FBI won't hire you, probably could still make it for the CIA.
Let's just assume for a second that a polygraph actually was fairly good at detecting physiological discomfort caused by telling a lie. This is a dubious claim, but let's just take it at face value and consider the logical extension of using this policy for disqualifying candidates. This will let two very extreme personality types through: -Those who are so incredibly rigid and moral they cannot lie, not even a minor (and very human) fib about something as inconsequential as how you consume media on a computer.
-Those who are so incredibly indifferent to lying it's pathological for them.
Neither of these personalities make ideal FBI agents. They are two extremes of a spectrum of morality and they both suck. I'd much rather our federal law enforcement agencies were staffed with people who are imperfect, but capable of empathy. They feel uncomfortable with fibbing, they understand it's not good, but they're capable of small doses of it. The discomfort they experience will prevent them from escalating their actions to extreme self-righteous or evil behavior.
In other words this practice applied in this extreme will almost certainly disqualify the most emotionally/morally stable candidates.
I go listen to a copyright song on Youtube. Illegal copyright infringement? Not on my part. Not on Google's part either, as long as they comply with the take-down request when it comes in. In fact, I think it would be very hard to illegally download something (Yes I know bittorrent yadda yadda but that's not JUST downloading, is it?) So I'd view a question like that as a trick question to weed out people who don't know copyright law, or a stupid question by stupid people who don't know copyright law or anything about computers. If it's the latter, they might have an easier time hiring people who know something about copyright law and computers if they didn't ask stupid questions like that. If it's the former, well I reckon that might work pretty well.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
All future FBI agents will be blind and tone deaf.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
The results of the polygraph will not be used, they will just look at your recorded internet sessions.
The polygraph is just there as an excuse, a distraction.
And tomorrow they will ask.. have you ever masturbated. If you do they won't hire you. If you lie they won't hire you!
an Amish would make a bad FBI agent...
which, IMHO, is the point....
if i wanted to cripple an organization that fights crime, i'd put archane rules about hiring that ensures only Mormons who do what they are told always without question could get a job
nice...this way, the criminals only have to bribe the boss
everyone else will just do as they are told without question
Thank you Dave Raggett
(Left un-explored is whether polygraph testing is an effective way to catch lies.)
And here I was watching from Europe thinking that this question had been settled years ago. Nobody else in the world is taking the polygraph seriously, it's a leftover from the time shortly after WW2 when too optimistic pseudo-scientists (mostly, some scientists as well) thought very soon now technology will solve every problem of the human race.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Which is exactly why they setup the lying test. How can you be a good agent if you cannot even lie without blushing?
You are leeching off people who do pay for the product (an illegal freemium model). So the manufacturer either bears the cost (i.e. takes a hit) or he increases the product price to meet a sales target (in which case you've stolen from legit buyers).
If you benefit from a commercial product/service that you don't pay for, that is theft. Most packaged products in your grocery/mall store would be worthless if they didn't have huge amount of IP to design and manufacture the product. So what you're paying for is essentially the IP involved in creating these products. If IP is worthless, you should be able to legally shoplift these products by just paying the cost of materials and $0 for any IP costs.
Why don't people like you buy books/music directly from the authors/musicians' websites and cut out the middlemen (publishers, bookstores)? Anyway, the days of authors/musicians getting only 10-12% are long gone. They can easily make 50-70% by selling their stuff online (via itunes of amazon store).
Are you living in the stone ages or the agrarian age? No! All important work done today is intellectual; machines do all the grunt work. So all these people doing intellectual work need to get paid... hence it's illegal downloading.
So I'd say the FBI is going to be restricted to Amish who were too wasted during their rumspringa to download anything.
With any luck, the FBI becomes so incompetent over time due to a complete lack of human resources that they lose the ability to perform their role as a proper enforcement arm of the very group they are sworn to protect (Hollywood) so that these stupid laws eventually go away.
Come to think of it, luck won't have much to do with it; it'll just happen. Mr. Incompetent himself (Eric Holder) is already doing a pretty good job at making all of the federal law enforcement agencies look stupid.
Only scam test which want to sell you stuff makes them open ended. The reality is that the scale are relatively well defined from 50 to 150 IIRC where about 99.9% or so of the populaztion fit (3 standard deviation about). Anything beyond that is simply not defined at all. Not even with or without the qualifier "well".
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
They obviously want to hire people who are too stupid to understand what the questions are asking and/or too stupid to know what is legit and what is not.
Because those skills will come handy later, when they're testifying in congress that they did not use any illegal techniques in obtaining or fabrication evidence - or when creating crime that they later solved.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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.
Likewise, they are insuring their agents are clueless socially broken idiots who are also sanctimonious twatwaffles about it.
Which makes them neither effective nor able to get the best and brightest. From what I have observed about the next generation of folks entering college about now, they will nave ZERO chance of hiring anybody in that age group. It'll be easy to identify the FBI undercover guy, he'll be the one with the walker and the gray hair.
This!
"illegal downloading music, movies and books."
Since I only download TV-series, I'm still a prime candidate for them, good to know.
I understand, downloading something pirated is illegal.
So do they also disqualify any person who has also committed speeding, jaywalking, underage consumption, or parking violations (or lies about having done so)?
Those too are all "crimes", clearly?
Perhaps the ubiquity of criminality says something about our society, or maybe more about the laws we've written to circumscribe citizen behavior.
Certainly excluding every person with a trivial illegality in their history will do 2 things for the FBI:
1) seriously reduce their potential employee pool, meaning those that get the jobs will get paid more (good for them), and
2) end up staffing the FBI with people that have led inhumanly-detached lives like beauty queens and the sorts of nearly-sociopathic weenies who have been cultivating themselves for public office since 3rd grade.
-Styopa
> So they should never ...
My post is descriptive, not prescriptive. I'm talking about what they do, not what they should do.
> People bend the rules all the time and usually aren't even aware they are until they're caught.
Yep, many people don't even notice when they're breaking the law. They want people who pay close attention to the rules. They think that Russian spies are after their secrets, so that attractive woman at the bar might be a Russian spy. Bending the rules by bragging about your work could risk national security, they believe.
My dad was like that - careful to do exactly right. He may have never received a speeding ticket in his life. We're pretty sure he did some work for ONI, our nation's oldest intelligence agency. The intelligence agency will use people who travel, such as celebrity entertainers and top business executives, as part-time spies. We think they did that with him because he used to meet with royal families in the middle east in his role at an oil company and when he died the navy immediately came for a box he had in the closet. He was in the navy before, and circumstances suggest he might have done work for them. We'll never know because if it was a secret, he'd keep the secret.
There is no such thing as copyright in this country. Not until Mickey Mouse is public domain.
They reneged on their side of the bargain... there is no reason for us to honor our side.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've never been arrested or tried in court for it. I am not a judge and am therefore not qualified to decide whether anything I may or may not have done is illegal or not. If I'm not sure anything I've done is illegal, then I can answer this question with a "No" and not be lying.
I was thinking that "I don't know" would be the appropriate answer, if you have never been convicted.
Is it legal to listen to copyrighted music on youtube? Honestly, I am not sure. Copyright laws are always changing, and very open to interpenetration.
Lists like this, including "morality clauses", are always fascinating and depressing to see. There are many activities of questionable morality, and they can only focus on so many. I suspect things like "speeding" and "sexual harassment" are not on the list for instance.
Yeah, like the FBI has NEVER done anything illegal themselves.
If you're in America and an American citizen, and you say you smoked pot last week, you've most certainly broken the law. You could be arrested instantly. You've just confessed to a crime.
American law doesn't care if you were in another country where its legal to smoke pot when you did it last week, America still considers that to be an offense and you did break they law. We hold you not just to our own laws when you are hear, but also when you are else where, and you are also held to the laws of the country you are visiting.
If you weren't visiting another country, then you've simply broken federal and possibly state and local laws. Pot is illegal across the nation, state laws do not supersede federal law.
He doesn't need to search your car, you just confessed. If he's got a dash cam in his car or on his person, you've got no hope of lying your way out of it afterwords.
What the hell makes you think you've not broken any law? The cop doesn't have to see you do it for you to be breaking the law, its the act of doing it part that matters from a legal perspective. The getting part caught only matters from a getting punished perspective. Getting or not getting punished does not change your guilt in any way.
How the hell is your post insightful?
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
If you think that much about the answer, then the polygraph will assume you are lying.
If you think the word "derpers" is "Fedspeak", then you will probably also be excluded from hiring at the FBI.
By only hiring the liars that are able to escape detection, aren't they effectively guaranteeing corruption throughout the agency? Isn't that effectively what this policy means?
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
From: FBI Field Office
To: Anonymous Coward
Thank you for your report. Rest assured, crimes with a Biden Index of 1.0 will be investigated and prosecuted thoroughly.
P.S. we're hiring! Please send us your resume.
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
The catch in all of this is that the original article seems to imply that ALL downloading is considered illegal by the FBI. They don't care if it's from legal sources or not. It sounds like they conflate using legal services with using The Pirate Bay.
Pretty much ZERO millenials will be able to meet that standard.
The people talking about the Amish and people over 50 probably have the right idea.
So the FBI are a bunch of fascist retards? No great surprise there.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Women aren't looking for a yes/no answer when they ask if their clothes are unflattering. They are trying to open a conversation on the subject of their entire look, including what is working, what is not working, and what elements are working together well, or clashing. They are not looking for you to "kill their question" as efficiently as possible. They are trying to invite detailed discussion and analysis.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
I'm sure that criminals will all be quaking in their boots to find out that the only people trying to catch them are people who couldn't even figure out how to get music for free.
Siily Americans! It's like your retarded Jury system: you can't get on a Jury if you've read about the case in the newspapers, or watched the TV news. In other words, they just get complete braindead morons (which works out well, btw, as those hicks can be easily manipulated). In fact, if I were the FBI, I would not hire anyone, under 50, who HASN'T downloaded music! Just to ensure I'm not hiring yet another autistic recluse, utterly estranged from the world we live in.
Yes it is. It leads to horrible, horrible, things like ginseng! http://www.realfarmacy.com/doz...
drink very moderately
DISQUALIFIED! NEXT?
That way the pool of potential candidates is pretty small. Especially as in this case they're talking about internships, which is typically for young people.
The problem is that they ask everyone a question where the honest answer, for the majority of candidates, results in rejection, but lying and getting caught results in rejection. So basically they filter down to who either have absolutely no technical curiosity at all, or people who can lie and get away with it. Both of those are bad for the FBI, since they'll be populated by luddites and liers.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
I don't know about catching lies, but I know that a polygraph test is an excellent way to convince people that an honest person is lying.
I propose we give out Peer Block update subscriptions to all promising youngsters as a means of encouraging safe downloading and in this way precluding only the best liars from becoming FBI cogs.
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear radtea,
Happy birthday to you.
There... Now everyone reading this thread is guilty of illegally downloading a song.
And since FBI likes gathering prints...
Yeah
I was working part time in a five-and-dime
My boss was Mr. McGee
He told me several times that he didn't like my kind
'Cause I was a bit too leisurely
Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing
But different than the day before
That's when I saw her, ooh, I saw her
She walked in through the out door, out door
She wore a
Raspberry beret
The kind you find in a second hand store
Raspberry beret
And if it was warm she wouldn't wear much more
Raspberry beret
I think I love her
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
...are exactly the kind of people that should never, under any circumstances, have any authority over the public whatsoever.
Coulda swore I just read that the FBI was green-lighting dope smokers because they couldn't find enough qualified people otherwise? Ah, yes, here it is:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/want-work-fbi-pot-smokers-welcome-chief-says-n110911
If they're gonna screen out downloaders, I mean, isn't that almost anyone who knows how to work a computer? The only people I've met who don't download media are those who haven't yet figured out how it's done.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
So basically the FBI is only hiring people over the age of 50?
No, they don't hire anyone over 35 last I knew. I found that out way after I turned 35.
The FBI is limiting themselves to people who have no understanding of online behavior.
It's like hiring undercover drug snitches that have no experience with illegal substances beyond TV.
Yeah right. They are looking for only one answer, and if you want to stay married long you had better answer correctly.
Use the Spores Luke, the Spores.
Not that I would ever promote illegal downloading...
But this is a little bit like looking for expert medical marijuana growers who have never smoked anything in their lives.
If they want to hire cybersecurity people who also happen to be millennials, they are basically restricting themselves to hiring "white hat" home-schooled Boy-scout types who've learned everything they know from some technical school. There's nothing _necessarily_ wrong with this -- but they are SERIOUSLY shrinking the size of their talent pool to about to maybe two to three thousand people who've never done this. Out of this small pool, they will have to find the applicants who are both ridiculously qualified and interested...
Plus people who have no idea of technology, and those who are particularly good t covering their tracks. I guess the last lot might be useful.
I think it was raised to 37 or 38 a few years back. (Second-hand knowledge from a friend who was interested and already over 35; FBI didn't work out, but State Department did ...)
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
and they cannot work, if you do not know, what is stress to the person and what is not. Questions like name, birth place and so on can be used to test "no stress". To test "stresses him", you need something you know its stressing. Illegal downloading is not. A questions about illegal downloading, which prevents you from getting the job will be quite stressing.
the polygraph is about as reliable as chicken bones and as trustworthy as a politician's promise. It is not used in evidence in military court, or criminal court, and has only limited value (for arbitrary definitions of "value") in civil court. I do not know why the FBI insist on using it as a compass to honesty, because the process is a scam. The only truly deceptive person throughout an entire session is the examiner.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Being in financial trouble will fail you for any security clearance. Not only does it show bad judgement, but it is a strong indication of susceptibility to bribes. While I'm sure you personally would not do that, how would they know?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Now we just need the FBI to vet all our politicians. It'd be interesting to see what our government would look like if noone lied.
From whom? I was told many years ago by a retired agent who gave a talk at my high school's career day that their unofficial policy was to not hire anyone *under* the age of 30, because they wanted you to have several years of practical experience in some related field before they would consider you for a position.
Given the relative unreliability of polygraph tests, why would the FBI think using them is a good idea? Anyone willing to take one probably knows how to beat the exam.
Now that you want to wage cyber-war against the world, or protect against cyber-terrorism, good luck finding recruits. So instead of the best and the brightest, the NSA kow-tows to protecting the intrests of large corporations instead of the public at large. Anyone really supprised.
But yeah, I don't think the FBI is recruting top tier people anyway. You'll get the same shit-tier bean counters who learned all they knew about computers in 4 years of college, who can't remember any of it because they are disintrested in the subject matter.
A former coworker of mine sells pirated movies at the office ($5 per DVD). She says it's legal because she downloads the movies using her paid Giganews subscription, so the movies are "hers".
True story: her husband (who works in the same office) went to court to challenge a speeding ticket. He got caught driving 94mph in a 60mph zone, which puts him in the reckless driving category (max + 20mph). But he claimed that since other drivers were on average driving 75mph (says he), he would gracefully accept a fine for driving 19mph over the limit, not the higher fine for reckless driving. The "rising tide" defense...
lucm, indeed.
They is a lot more to them than an IQ test and they don't pretend to cover everything like an IQ test which is why they are useful.
I wish they would raise it to 60 or something. Then the could bring in senior IT type managers. Guys like me. I could also tell them to get off of my lawn.
From whom? I was told many years ago by a retired agent who gave a talk at my high school's career day that their unofficial policy was to not hire anyone *under* the age of 30, because they wanted you to have several years of practical experience in some related field before they would consider you for a position.
Looked it up - https://www.fbijobs.gov/114.as...
23 less than X less than 37.
Doesn't matter, I'm still well over a decade to old.
"Don't screw your neighbors wife" is a social norm in most parts of 21 century USA, but it's been a punishable law in most places for most of the last 10,000 years. "Gave the law unto Moses ..." is a familiar phrase to Muslims, Jews, and Christians. Even in 21st century USA, it's enforced by a court who will formally throw the offender out of town.
You do know that a polygraph test is bullshit. Your pass and fail is based on the charlatan running the test personal opinion of you. Casting lots, or reading tea leaves would work equally well. And if you fail. No Fed jobs for you. Ever.
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
While you are correct that the person running the test may interpret the results based on their opinion of you, most of the time, the test is used to determine how nervous you are when answering a question. The assumption being that if you are lying you will be more nervous than if you are telling the truth. So that even if the person running the test is genuinely attempting to get an accurate reading, it does not actually mean anything. This means that anyone with sufficient self-discipline (and in the case of a polygraph test, "sufficient" is a fairly low bar) can pass an honestly administered lie detector test while lying through their teeth.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
If you ever took this unseriously, you disrepected the FBI, in a very personal way.
Poor people have tons of computers. I help at a soup kitchen. Many have newer smartphones than I do (but I'm not a early adopter).
It's spelled asinine, which is weird because MW says "from asinus, ... of or like an ass."
Then they won't hire you.
Or maybe they'll still hire you, they just want your dirty laundry in the open.
It's like any politician, it's not the bad stuff you admitted to that gets you, it's the bad stuff you lied about.
If I'm the FBI I'm worried about my agents having undisclosed secrets, not just for the potential of people blackmailing them, but because defence attorneys might find out those dirty secrets, use them to discredit an investigator, and get a case thrown out.
In that light if an applicant is so secretive they won't even admit to something as inane as copyright infringement then how do you expect that they'll disclose the serious stuff. For instance that one of their former best friends is now a drug smuggler so you shouldn't assign them to investigate a rival cartel so it doesn't look like an attempt to eliminate the competition.
I stole this Sig
Next they will refuse to hire you if you ever went 1mph or more over the national speed limit.
Like that study where they tried finding men who hadn't seen any porn, they wont be able to find anyone who hasn't done it.
Unfortunately true, and probably a good sprinkling of super christians, like the Duggers.
Cheap storage VM.
~ but they're practically begging FSB and PLA to infiltrate them.
Why would the Fuqua School of Business and the Public Library Association want to infiltrate the FBI?
[Business] Leaders are [Federal] Readers?
Yeah, right.
~ if you want to stay married long you had better answer correctly.
Wife: "Honey, does this dress make me look fat?"
Husband: (curls up into fetal position and starts sobbing quietly to himself)
Yeah, right.