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.)

Comments

Fewer candidates to draw from...

[jsepeta]

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.

Re:Fewer candidates to draw from...

[Anonymous Coward]

The FBI is a federal law enforcement agency. Their mission is to enforce federal law.

Re:Fewer candidates to draw from...

[Jane Q. Public]

If you use bittorrent, you are distributing while you download.

Depends on whether you mean the client called "bittorrent", or the BitTorrent protocol.

There's nothing in the protocol that says you "have to" upload in order to download. That's something that's built into most of the clients, on the reasoning that if nobody shares, there will be nothing to download.

I disagree: people have shown themselves to be willing to share things regardless of any such rules.

Further, the laws against "piracy", (which is NOT the same as downloading), were intended primarily to punish people who make bulk copies of copyrighted works and sell them for a profit. That's essentially what "copyright piracy" means. It's a legal term. And downloading doesn't qualify. Downloading isn't a "crime" at all. It's just a copyright violation. Piracy, on the other hand, is a crime.

Some of the biggest differences are:

[A] Almost all downloaders are doing it for personal use, not for profit. A reasonable penalty for that would be lost profits to the copyright holder (which is almost always far, far lower than the retail price), so for example copying a DVD might be a total loss of profits to the copyright holder of not more than about 50 cents. PLUS a "statutory penalty", which courts use to discourage such behavior. A rather large fine for creating a "loss of profit" of 50 cents might be 50 dollars... 100 times the actual damage.

[B] A very big problem with that is that studies have been showing for over 15 years now that in the vast majority of cases of downloading, there never would have been a sale (or rental) in the first place. So even 50 cents "damage" to the copyright holder as in [A] is more theoretical than actual. Further, downloaders give the actual product free word-of-mouth advertising, further mitigating any "damage".

It doesn't matter what the FBI "considers" downloading to be. THE LAW says it isn't a crime. And it sure as hell isn't "stealing". They are two very, very distinct areas of the law. When you steal from somebody, you deprive them of the use of the stolen item. When you copy a copyrighted work, you haven't deprived anyone of that work. Any "damage" is purely theoretical and must, logically, be tied to any lost profit from that particular copy.

Statutory damages that were originally intended for bulk, profitable piracy are not appropriate for individual downloaders. At all. That whole mess was nothing but "crony capitalism" at work. And lots of people have suffered a lot, as a result.

Re:Fewer candidates to draw from...

[cpt kangarooski]

Further, the laws against "piracy", (which is NOT the same as downloading)

There are no laws against "piracy" per se; rather there are laws against copyright infringement, which downloading commonly is.

were intended primarily to punish people who make bulk copies of copyrighted works and sell them for a profit.

The statute doesn't require infringement en masse, nor does it require selling them for a profit. Perhaps you'd like to read it? It's 17 USC 501. It refers to other sections, in particular 17 USC 106, and 101.

That's essentially what "copyright piracy" means. It's a legal term.

No it's not. The correct legal term would be copyright infringement.

And downloading doesn't qualify. Downloading isn't a "crime" at all. It's just a copyright violation.

No, any copyright infringement which meets the prerequisites of 17 USC 506 is a crime. For example, if you willfully download a work in an infringing manner, and that work has a retail value of over $1,000 (easily doable with certain computer programs), that's a criminal infringement.

And it sure as hell isn't "stealing"

This is the first, and perhaps only thing in your post that's correct.

Polygraph

[thetagger]

The polygraph, along with IQ tests, are a very American forms of superstition.

Re:Polygraph

[Anonymous Coward]

The polygraph, along with IQ tests, are a very American forms of superstition.

Yeah, quite a few hipsters that got less than ideal IQs go out of their way at every opportunity to deride the single most precise intellectual measure known to man.

Re:Polygraph

[Anonymous Coward]

If only it was accurate too.

Re:Polygraph

[Artifakt]

What's an ideal IQ? 200? 500? The scale is open ended at the top, and even a perfect score on different tests equates to a different maximum.

  Plus, I'm pretty sure that your "less than ideal" would apply to some of the most brilliant people in history (James Clerk Maxwell, estimated IQ 115 (note that people who achieved something that applied to practical discipline, such as engineering or medicine, seldom did it nearly as early as precocious musicians and novelists, and so are always estimated lower unless the estimater includes a fudge factor. Mozart gets estimated much higher than Beethoven without that, because he started at 6, not 22. The way the fudge factor is calculated is to simply set both those great musicians to an (apparently arbitrary) 165, and adjust for age of first composition based on that ratio in calculating other historic musicians scores - this makes Wagner among the very elite, and Bach only 'fair to middlin').
          Or try Charles Darwin, and Copernicus, both estimated IQ 160, (The same score, as Dolph Lungren's actual test results). President Bush (41) scored a 98 - his son Bush (43) scored 125. Steven Hawking scored "only" 160, same as the estimated score for Einstein - both are eclipsed by actor James Woods and John Sunnunu (180 actual score each)
          President Carter scored at least 10 points above any other president or presidential candidate of the 20th or early 21st centuries, and of the current crop, Hillary Clinton is 5 points lower than Carter, but still beats everybody else that has shown any interest in running this time by at least anoher 10 points.

So I'm going to take this oportunity to deride the test - look maw, I'm a hipster!

So...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

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 irony is off the charts

[sideslash]

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.)

Re:The irony is off the charts

[mike449]

They are looking for people who will do anything their superiors tell them to do. This particular bit is about finding people who don't do stuff the authorities declare illegal. This is all about obedience, not about "not doing illegal stuff".

Re:FBI has no clue

[bughunter]

No. It will dwindle to include only young sociopaths who can fool a lie detector.

Re:Ok, but

[Guspaz]

So basically the FBI is only hiring people over the age of 50?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Ok, but

[alen]

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.

Re:Ok, but

[radtea]

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.

Re:yes, they people who follow the law/ rules

[king neckbeard]

Oddly enough, they seem to ignore all the rules about constitutional limits to their powers, except perhaps for telling a lawyer so he can spin a way that it can be argued to not be breaking the law. Failing that, he'll find a way to pin it on somebody unimportant or already in hot water. And then there's just run of the mill corruption, abuse, and incompetence. They seem to select for a particular mindset far more than they select for moral superiority and genuine respect for law.

They may still hire you

[Etherwalk]

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.

Ironic.

[Vellmont]

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"