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Top FBI Attorney Worried About WhatsApp Encryption (usnews.com)
An anonymous reader shares an article on USNews:WhatsApp on Tuesday announced that all types of messages on the latest version of its app are now automatically protected by end-to-end encryption, and the FBI's top attorney is worried some of the platform's more than 1 billion global users will take advantage of the move to hide their crime- or terrorism-related communications. FBI General Counsel James Baker said in Washington on Tuesday that the decision by the Facebook-owned messaging platform to encrypt its global offerings "presents us with a significant problem" because criminals and terrorists could "get ideas." "If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out," he said. "It has public safety costs. Folks have to understand that, and figure out how they are going to deal with that. Do they want the public to bear those costs? Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs?"Maybe the government shouldn't have imposed so many surveillance programs on its citizens -- and kept quiet about it for years -- that they now feel the need to use sophisticated security technologies.
Good. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.
There's that "T" word to justify their actions again. Hey...guess what... the "T"s are ALREADY using encryption.
Something about if encryption was a crime then only criminals would use encryption?
Let Freedom Ring, bitches.
Big fucking deal.
Come on really? That is the lamest and tired argument around. It is in the publics interest to maintain some semblance of privacy at all cost, especially in what is quickly becoming a police state.
So what if communication gets encrypted? App still runs on Android device.
Maybe they will have to get off their collective asses and actually file for proper warrants and do some proper investigative work instead of it being spoon fed on a silver platter. The humanity!
The problem is user may attempt to take advantage of the move to hide their perfectly legal and private endeavors which in no way break the law.
As usual, FBI General Counsel James Baker and his kind are outright lying, and asserting you do not have a legal right to do things anonymously or without your government knowing, and that many of those people don't give a fuck what the FBI wants because our rights are not defined by assholes who feel we should have no right to privacy if it impedes the ability of government spy on us.
Why, FBI General Counsel James Baker and his entire family need to be sure their entire lives are made public so that we can be assured he is not misusing his office to conduct illegal business.
The short version of this is: too fucking bad, there are legally valid reasons to have encryption, the world isn't subject to this asshole's definition of "valid", and he doesn't get to decide without oversight or process that he is entitled to any of this data.
But like all these modern fascists, he wants the right to see everything we do, and then decide if it's legal.
Fuck that. I think the entire rest of the world should start using real, hardened encryption the US has no access, and send a big "fuck off" and say it's none of your damned business.
Stop pretending that undermining our rights is necessary to protect our rights. Because that's a fucking lie.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Hey, it was so easy to spy on everyone for any reason, and whaaaa.... now you've made that difficult. Cry baby, cry....
I really wish the FBI would just get over it - strong encryption is necessary for people to maintain any sense of freedom whatsoever as without privacy there is no freedom.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out
Finally for once the power of the uncaring and slack public will actually result in something good.
PEOPLE MIGHT GET IDEAS GUYS.
Terrorism! 9/11! Public safety!
If I ever die in a terrorist attack and they use my death as more leverage to remove encryption and install back doors, please insert the brain of my deceased corpse into a robot so I can ROFLstomp them.
I would prefer something with opposable thumbs, but a quadcopter with sharpened blades would work fine too.
Alternatively, tell them to shut the fuck up and stop using my body to push their political agenda. Otherwise I will haunt them.
Nothing but upside down USB plugs and BSoD's will come to them if they continue. It would be an abstract kind of hell.
Are we living in this world again?
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/...
Were we ever not living in that world?
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
Get him to do what a lot of people do :).
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Dr. Evil? Is that you?
suck it old man ! :)
"Oh noes, we are totally worried about WhatsApp's completely closed-source alleged implementation of encryption that was totally didn't have back-doored from the outset! I sure hope the bad guys don't use it, or we'll be in a world of hurt! The criminals and terri'rsts have already won!"
0/0, FBI.
The more of the people's communications the government (and LEOs they control) can't read, the better.
Nice to see people fighting back against the police state. Let's hope this is only the first of many steps to curtail government's power.
Who could have known?!
if m one of the users and doing nothng wrong as are 99.99999999999999% then it goes to show he is slandering all of the users....
start suing the fbi....
I know people who are Pakistani. I know people who have family in Libya. With all the Syrians moving to my area, I suspect that I will soon know a Syrian. What scares the crap out of me is that just through the classic six degrees of separation they will be "in contact" with an associate of a known terrorist. This then puts me in contact with someone in contact with an associate of a known terrorist. Then some poorly written ML algorithm will see that I have this situation but through to two separate terrorist organizations. Then boom, I have somehow become one of the strongest links connecting the three. Basically a Canadian terrorist nexus. Add to that that I have visited LiveLeak where terrorist videos regularly get posted, and suddenly I am being pulled aside at airports, or cops have a big red blinking light show up on their computer when they pull me over for running a stop sign, and come out all guns drawn.
It is not only the invasion of privacy that worries me but the complete and certified morons who then interpret this data.
I just think of the hard partying British couple who's tweet, "I'm going to destroy America and dig up Marilyn Monroe" got them arrested for planning to commit crimes. Context you stupid morons.
Plus in 99% of this sort of stuff the only advantage is to find out that terrorist A who blew himself to bits was actually in contact with terrorist B who blew himself to bits. It doesn't prevent squat, it just makes the paper pushers happy to have a better trail to confirm whatever obvious facts they started with.
Here is the horrible thing about all this. Everyone knows exactly which country on this planet funds the bulk of modern ISIS terrorism. Officials won't say it, and they certainly won't do anything about it. So instead they just want to rape our rights to prove that they are doing something.
Is he also concerned with widespread ownership of assault weapons? Is he doing anything about those who lose their lives in car accidents, drown in their bath tub, or for that matter are killed by FBI agents who improperly assess the situation. "If the public does nothing, (stuff) like that will continue to roll out," "It has public safety costs. Folks have to understand that, and figure out how they are going to deal with that. Do they want the public to bear those costs? Do they want the victims (of these circumstances) to bear those costs?" Mr. FBI should focus on serious threats, and encryption is not one of them.
ONE MILLION er BILLION eh? thats a lot of terrorists...he means all of us....so the truth comes out the fbi are anti democratic rogue agency , they need to be all arrested for treason against the people
It is the pervasive nature of this growing panopticon, driven by cries of the need for extraordinary power because terrorists!, followed by immediate re-use (i.e. you lied) for normal, if disturbing, crimes of drug sales and kiddie porn. Plain ol' crime investigation follows immediately. Well, probably not even follows. Coincidental with.
Why? Gross lies and fraud here. No, we deny you the panopticon, especially your sloppy, sloppy implementation with little tracking of use -- remember LOVEINT where agents track people their hearts throb for? What if an agent spies on a political opponent for their political boss?
You have no way to track this, and thus review it by elected officials. Yet this is the primary concern the Founding Fathers had in the Bill of Rights, to prevent the Right of Kings to go mucking around in the affairs of their political rivals and other uppity folks who might challenge their power.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I am distinctly not a lawyer, but is there merit to this thought? The entire legal basis of the "third party doctrine", with which enforcement types can grab your data from a company you do business with basically on demand (or with very easy to get approval), depends on your having "no reasonable expectation of privacy. Well, if I end to end encrypt all communications and stored data in such a way that the storing company does not hold the key, only I do, then I DO now have a reasonable expectation of privacy and the entire third party doctrine collapses legally. I'm VERY certain that it would take an army of attorneys and lots of $$$ and patience to push this idea through the courts, and likely a legal issue with which to establish "standing" to pursue the issue, but thoughts? Is there merit to this line of thinking?
I think I just pulled a muscle rolling my eyes at Baker's comments. I could just hear the FBI saying the same thing about search warrants and Miranda rights in the past. Yes! all right? Yes! I am willing the "bear the cost" of encryption. I am much more willing to bear the cost of the POSSIBILITY of a terrorist attack, rather than bear the cost of the CERTAINTY of government abuse and repression.
Instead of just having the NSA spy on everything, the shit for brains at the FBI might have to get off their asses, stop whining constantly to congress, and do some real police work for once.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
The amount of baseless FUD the FBI and government pumps out continues to be nothing short of astonishing when considered that it's in the face of overwhelming evidence they're wrong on so many levels.
Because, you know, it's not as if they couldn't just use one-time pads to transmit in the clear over Twitter, or basic steganographic techniques to communicate messages with pictures of cats...
Oh wait... that's probably exactly what they're doing. But that would be inconvenient to the line of bullshit they're trying to sell us. Because it's not as if trying to catch terrorists by spying on the communications of all Americans (and citizens of other nations) is a violation of the Constitution or anything...
"Inveniemus Viam Aut Faciemus" 'We will find a way... Or we will make one!' --Hannibal of Carthage
Back in 1987, the late SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia said, "There is nothing new in the realization that the Constitution sometimes insulates the criminality of a few in order to protect the privacy of us all." http://www.nytimes.com/1987/03... In today's world, he'd probably go on to say that decisions on privacy should not be decided by SCOTUS, but rather it should be up to the Legislative branch since the US Constitution doesn't ever mention the word privacy. It's a very frustrating world we live in.
> Maybe the government shouldn't have imposed so many surveillance programs on its citizens -- and kept quiet about it for years -- that they now feel the need to use sophisticated security technologies.
Let's get off the "fuck the man" train for a second and look at this rationally.
I am really happy that people are waking up to the necessity of encryption. But end-to-end encryption relies on a secured local endpoints, and all we have are devices that are 100% owned by the corporations we rent them from.
That phone in your hand is not yours. It's a hostile environment for hostile apps.
I don't understand why ROOMS are tolerated so widely. People go in a ROOM, they close the fucking door to the ROOM and they speak softly and I can't hear a damn thing they say. People have been using all these ROOMS to have private conversations for years. I bet nearly every damn crime this year has been planned in a ROOM of some kind. This ROOM tech must be stopped!!!! Criminals might get ideas! Imagine that! They can talk in private in a room and we can't do anything about it!!! The madness must stop!!!!
and 99% for a legitimate way to keep things private. Gov action: Let's make it illegal.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Still true today.
Will this create problems when trying to root out bad actors? Sure!
The thing is, there's no such thing as perfect safety. No matter how hard law enforcement agencies try.
So, the American public can grow a pair, and realize that the government CANNOT protect them in all situations.
They can then choose whether or not they will act with more circumspection and awareness of the dangers inherent in their surroundings.
And they'll accept the fact that sometimes bad things happen regardless of how much effort was put into prevention.
Or we can simply have ever-greater encroachment on people's liberties.
And bad shit will CONTINUE to happen, regardless of how much effort is put into prevention.
So we have a choice:
* Liberty and danger?
OR
* Tyranny and danger?
PICK ONE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This rhetoric got stupid out of control a long time ago. Except wait... this isn't just persuasive speaking, not when you consider where it is coming from, and by no means just this one instance. This sort of speech is coming from people who have power whether directly or indirectly. This is whining. Whining against a population that has almost but not quite in its totality told the spoiled child no. But we are not the parents, we should be but we aren't. This whining, regardless of the direction it appears to be aimed, is on the table of its intended audience. The almighty "Powers that Be". People who could not tell the difference between a passage from 1984 and the Constitution. That is to say, all things national security. I could carry on about why there is real reason to be concerned over this sort of inane dystopian threat-speak, but we are at war with Oceania right now so I have bigger concerns.
Onto a more serious note: on this day, with nothing to hide, I declare full encryption on all data and communications I utilize that can be. For that which is otherwise, I shall seek an appropriate platform to migrate to. I'm late getting on board with that philosophy, but it is now past time.
I do not want safety over liberty.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
All of these people holding positions of power demanding access to everything we do all the time need to be the first to make their everything open to us. Strangely they won't do that, and go to great lengths to prevent us from knowing anything about their activities even though we write their paycheck.
This demand should extend beyond Government officials and to people like Gates, Schmidt, and others in the private sector that make the same arguments and demands that "we" be transparent while "they" hide information and hoard wealth.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The FBI attorney is (purposefully?) confusing possible and probable as well as level of risk. Is it possible that terrorists will see WhatsApp's encryption, flock there, and plot a huge attack resulting in many deaths unseen by law enforcement? Certainly. It is also possible that the terrorists will wake up tomorrow morning realizing that this whole "kill everyone different than us" thing is idiotic, will drop their weapons, and take up a less destructive hobby. Both are possible, but are also not very probable. The recent attacks have been planned using SMS and other unencrypted communication methods. If law enforcement can't catch them when they're not encrypting, why go through the bother of deploying encryption?
As far as of level risk goes, there were 32,727 deaths due to terrorism worldwide in 2014 (Source). Even adding all terrorism deaths together since 2006 gives 161,834. Remember, this is worldwide. If we wanted to limit this to US deaths from terrorism, we'd get 303 American deaths from 2004-2014 (Source). In contrast, 2014 had 17.6 million identity theft victims in the US alone. (Source)
This all means that you have almost a 639,000 times greater risk of being an identity theft victim than a terrorism victim. Granted, I doubt many people are going to use WhatsApp to share information that could be used in identity theft, but this isn't the FBI vs. WhatsApp any more than it was just the FBI vs. Apple. It's the FBI vs Encryption. They want to see encryption either go away or be backdoored so they can get in at any time. Unfortunately, if this were to happen, a lot more people would find themselves vulnerable to various scams and the number of terrorists captured would be at or near zero.
This isn't even "trading liberty for security" as much as it is "trading security for some nebulous promise of possible security later on."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Get this paranoid nut case of out of any authoritative place in government. Maybe a window at the DMV where he can do only do minimal damage. This helps to stop the alphabets from doing an all out colostomy on every Joe Average that tweaks his interest. The upside for him is that now they have an easier time hiding their home grown terrorist operations. Thats the way life works, it rains and the sun comes out, get over yourself, there is a life beyond paranoia. Remember it was chicken little that was running around in circles screaming the sky is falling. Hollering I told you so at each and every one of life's aberrations no longer resonates with the public, its just more white noise.
Does anyone actually believe that facebook doesn't have access to the messages, even though they are supposedly using 'end to end' encryption? And if you do believe that, can you explain why facebook would have spent 19 billion acquiring the company, only to not be able to show or target ads at it's users?
Kinda like those terrorists that agreed on keywords before attacks and used burner phones to say said keywords.
The war on encryption is already not a worthwhile endeavour and is already not harming terrorists right now.
All it is doing is pushing dodgy people further in to encryption that commit long-term criminal activity not on the scale of terrorism.
Things like child slave rings, human trafficking in general, large-scale drug operations and so on.
You did this. You made these things harder to track.
You pushed these people further in to the alleys of the internet.
Thanks. Asswipes.
Poster got it right.
Qui custodiet ipsos custodes?
The watchers have been watching without enough scrutiny. People are reacting. They should have allowed effective guidance and scrutiny.
I just did some googling. Apparently the number of people who die by terrorism from now back to 2001 is absolutely dwarfed by the number of people who day every year from automobile accidents, mostly caused by allowing cars to be driven by error prone, inferior, humans.
Maybe a better use of our tax dollars would be a new 'Manhattan Project' or "Moon Shot' project. Replace the 'War On Terror' with a real 'War On Human Driven Cars'. Self driving cars for everyone. That would save vastly more lives than would ever be saved by allowing the FBI snoops to break into every phone, any where, any time, and without any kind of supervision. That is what this is really about.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
because criminals and terrorists could "get ideas." : Encryption is a reality, gimping publicly used services harms the public, not sophisticated criminals.
If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out : Good
Do they want the public to bear those costs? : Yes
Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs? : Yes
Any other questions?
If one billion WhatsApp users are using the app to hide their terrorist or criminal activities, then the FBI is right to be worried. I would be worried as well.
Oh, and next they will want all mailed letters to be unsealed, you know, just in case they need to take a look what you are sending.
Do they want the public to bear those costs?
Hell, no, you pinkie-communist bastard!
"No new taxes"
"Small government, USA!"
Privatization is better
"Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), and Richard Burr (R-N.C.), reportedly have circulated draft legislation dealing with judges' power to order companies to assist in accessing encrypted data."
Once again, someone screams "Look, terrorist" and the pro-corporate agenda is replaced by the pro-state agenda. It's never about the people.
Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs?
Not quite a 'think of the children' meme but it's still asking for something to make people (feel) safe. How about people ask that 'national security' laws are repealed every time a terrorist attack occurs: They obviously didn't work, any other excuse is just chasing rainbows.
Everyone needs end-to-end encryption, unbreakable, backdoor proof encryption faced with the FBI
that spent 41 agents FOUR YEARS of hunting down something useful to Kenneth Starr
And 12 years looking for anything that would silence or intimidate Martin Luther King
And 18 agents hunting down Nixon's Enemies list
And at least 5 years chasing reporter's notebooks and phone calls to silence whistleblowers
And the 8 years hunting Julian Assange for the "crime" of showing the deliberate murder of Journalists in Iraq.
Our liberty REQUIRES secrecy from these people.
Our safety can't be guaranteed by giving up our freedom.
In fact, a lot of the recent FBI announcements seem much too convenient.
You are telling me that a spokesman for a spy agency is publicizing to both criminals and non-criminals alike an effective method to make it harder for them to catch criminals, knowing full well that the non-criminals either don't care very much or will side against him if they do care (and understand)?
The end result being ciminals knowing how to hide or non-criminals learning what is important and then turning against him.
Something is telling me that the FBI really wants encryption to happen. "Don't throw me into the brier patch, no!"
So many people in the financial industry should have gone to jail for all the shit that went on during the lead up to the 2008 financial crisis. Yet here the FBI is worried about whether our dick picks are encrypted or not.
FBI's top attorney is worried some of the platform's more than 1 billion global users will take advantage of the move to hide their crime- or terrorism-related communications.
How many times has that happened so far now?
Modern App appers know that you have to use an app written for AppOS to terrorize the great satan, not luddite encryption!
It seems that they are not concerned with terrorism as they are to other criminal activities.
It was on slashdot a while back about how 53 (?) times they used the secret court to get warrants for terrorists,
and 11,000-plus times to get warrants for drug users/dealers....
No mention of how many times it was used to catch bribes and kickbacks to public officials, or congressmen, specifically...
No mention of the use to catch off-shore tax evasion...
Without ISP or anyone else knowing what we say on line.
I don't wear a tinfoil hat, but in reading all of the comments that effectively say, "Good! They shouldn't have access to my data! F-Off!" it highlights an assumption:
it seems that a lot of people are assuming that, because the government is asking for companies to disallow the encryption, it is because they can't break it (and are being defeated by it).
However, it could be a clever lie. What if in publishing this type of rhetoric they're hiding the fact that they can do something about encrypted communication?
Why broadcast the message, "Hey, if you go use WhatsApp, we can't possibly listen in on your conversation."
Why bother saying it at all vs letting paranoia and uncertainty work against the "bad guys?"
Not knowing if the communication is safe (or not) could be more effective at preventing bad guys from using it.
Instead, sending the message that it IS safe because it can't be cracked by "good guys" would encourage its use.
It feels more like propaganda than admission of limitation.
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Freedom has a price.
But it sounds like Baker doesn't like the price. So he wants to shut down the freedom.
It's just that simple.
You are the idiot and everyone modding you up. The guy isn't lying and hasn't said people don't have a legal right to do things anonymously. He said encrypting things has a cost and is unsure if the general public wants to pay that cost. There is no lie in that and it has nothing to do with legal rights. He's not proposing laws for or against encryption, he's just saying there are pros and cons.
Please learn to read what's actually written and not what your world-view thinks is written.
So what if criminals use encryption? Criminals will always meet in secret (remotely or in person) and discuss issues privately. 'Back in the day' criminals didn't discuss sensitive matters over the phone in case it was bugged, the same thing will happen with any unsecured communication channel.
Eliminate or compromise encryption and the same thing will happen, either they won't use that channel of communication or they will use code phrases (pad cypher).
Regardless the cops will have to do what the cops are supposed to do, investigate. Not just sit on their ass and surveil.
"Grab them by the pussy" -- President of the United States of America
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Think back 50 years, the FBI *could* record everything that you said on the phone (tap). Or in your home (bug). Or in the post.
Technology has created a mechanism whereby what was visible now isn't.
It isn't possible to argue that encryption is necessary for WhatsApp because WhatsApp has been working perfectly fine without it.
The obvious thing that can be done is the law can be changed to allow the FBI to serve a "tap" warrant to facebook to intercept decrypted conversation. It then becomes facebook's problem on how to do that. facebook has smart guys working there, they could find a way to do it if there were the right incentives for facebook.
This is posturing at best, utter ignorance at worst. Telegram, for example, is already the terrorist messaging program of choice. It has had end to end encryption since inception, which has to be at least a couple years by now. You'd think he'd know that.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
That's the problem with millennialis these days, they want the solutions handed to them on a silver platter /s.
Yes, there is.
They have it in North Korea.
there is a higher probability of me getting hurt in a traffic accident than being killed by a terrorist so until the fbi figures out how to make sure everyone on the road actually knows how to drive i will keep helping to roll out encryption. pro tip: the public isnt doing nothing, we are the ones driving the encryption push because there is more risk of your information being used by government agencies to put you on a watch list that you will neither find out about or have a way to get off of than being killed by a terrorist.
plus death is inevitable and final, spending the rest of your life dealing with bad actors in the three letter agencies is hell.
Ideas? fuck the ideas, the criminals and terrorists already have the ideas, they already have the implementation! and until all the books are burnt there is nothing that they can do about it other than whine and complain about their job being harder, well if its that hard, then quit! clearly they are not equipped to do the job.
"It has public safety costs. Folks have to understand that, and figure out how they are going to deal with that. Do they want the public to bear those costs? Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs?"
Those 'costs' are fucking trivial in the grand scheme. So, yes.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
If the FBI is concerned, then that indicates it is time to give WhatsApp a second look.
I wonder if FBI General Counsel James Baker considers himself an educated man. I'll bet he does.
Could it be that he is unaware that his "big question" was answered, definitively, centuries ago?
Benjamin Franklin, 1785
"It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer".
William Blackstone, 1765
"It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"
Increase Mather, 1692
"It were better that Ten Suspected Witches should escape, than that one Innocent Person should be Condemned."
Maimonides, circa 12th Century
"It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death."
The Prophet Muhammad, circa 12th Century
"Avoid legal punishments as far as possible, and if there are any doubts in the case then use them, for it is better for a judge to err towards leniency than towards punishment".
The Bible, Genesis 18:23-32
' "Will you consume the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous within the city? Will you consume and not spare the place for the fifty righteous who are in it?" [...] He [The Lord] said, "I will not destroy it for the ten's sake." '
Is General Counsel James Baker unaware of this long history, precedent and tradition? Is he trying to make himself look wise? Perhaps he is just preparing weasel space for the future, when a terror attack inevitably happens. "See, we told you. All this could have been avoided if only you had let us pry into the private communications of every human being on Earth!"
FTA: James Bakers says, "If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out," he said. "It has public safety costs. Folks have to understand that, and figure out how they are going to deal with that. Do they want the public to bear those costs? Do they want the victims of terrorism to bear those costs?"
Fuck you James Baker.
Fuck you FBI.
Get the CIA to stop knocking over the Governments of Sovereign Nations, and we will not have a terrorism problem.
9 of the top 10 terrorist acts in the US were performed by home-grown US Citizens.
Enough with the FUD and paranoia. Yes, I know that it increases the FBI budget, but that is not the reason that the FBI exists (to grow). Your job is to prevent domestic and inter-state crimes, or to catch those who have committed such.
STOP over-reaching.
1984?! Is it just me, or are we seeing the proliferation of Big Brother here? Wouldn't it seem to be a far better cure to CURE SOCIETAL IDIOCY so as to reduce the need to do terrorism in the first place? Things like resolving religious myths via educating all peoples as to the scientific proofs (like the evidence that the world is NOT flat!). Things like the ancient religions instituted 'rules' geared toward the times; where the publics' immature mind set couldn't handle certain truths, and the leadership did not know any better. Even today's leaders base platforms on purely political motives rather than actual true needs of the peoples based on true SCIENTIFIC revelation. Although, I do see evidence that some people need serious help. Take Trump and his supporters. What the hell are they thinking? Could they be cured through actual EDUCATION? Do you really want things done the Trump way? A way that breeds terrorism?!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.