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FBI Authorized Informants To Break The Law 22,800 Times In 4 Years (dailydot.com)
blottsie quotes a report from the Daily Dot: Over a four-year period, the FBI authorized informants to break the law more than 22,800 times, according to newly reviewed documents. Official records obtained by the Daily Dot under the Freedom of Information Act show the Federal Bureau of Investigation gave informants permission at least 5,649 times in 2013 to engage in activity that would otherwise be considered a crime. In 2014, authorization was given 5,577 times, the records show. USA Today previously revealed confidential informants engaged in "otherwise illegal activity," as the bureau calls it, 5,658 times in 2011. The figure was at 5,939 the year before, according to documents acquired by the Huffington Post. In total, records obtained by reporters confirm the FBI authorized at least 22,823 crimes between 2011 and 2014. Unfortunately, many of those crimes can have serious and unintended consequences. One of the examples mentioned in the Daily Dot's report was of an FBI informant who "was responsible for facilitating the 2011 breach of Stratfor in one of the most high-profile cyberattacks of the last decade. While a handful of informants ultimately brought down the principal hacker responsible, the sting also caused Stratfor, an American intelligence firm, millions of dollars in damages and left and estimated 700,000 credit card holders vulnerable to fraud."
I authorize you to break the law. Are they above the law or refusing to enforce the law? Not much difference.
Reap what you sow.
Did the FBI allow crimes to be committed simply to make their jobs easier, or because it was the lesser of two evils. I suspect that it's a bit of both. More FBI sanctioned crimes will occur. The trend isn't ending because of a report about it. In upcoming years, we may not be able to find out how much sanctioned crime occurred, as they are likely to redact just about everything to hide their combination of laziness and criminal complicity. It's really a sad state of affairs in the USA these days.
Where is the "SLASHDOT IS FBI" guy? I figured he'd be all over this story.
Maybe he's thinking about going back to being the "cows say moo" guy.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The comparison of this number to assorted lude and crude innuendo and various "your mom" jokes is left as an exercise for the reader.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
You are probably just being funny, but the FBI does have a habit of looking the other way when a person with money or power breaks the law. The sad part is that if Hillary becomes President, she will never have to pay for her crimes.
I don't know where "he" is but i would recommend according to sources on the net to be on the look out for shape shifting aliens disguised as humans, who, like the hybrid humans+aliens, must consume human flesh to maintain their human appearance.
human flesh is being found more and more in common food today,
there exists a certain barrier in normal, everyday thought which hides the reality of these creatures and their hybrids along with the smell and taste of human flesh in common food as well as the scent of these creatures. they all smell the same. while the aliens and hybrids are safe within their homes, they prepare higher concentrates of human flesh in food because they can get away with it and unless you're in the right state of mind, you wouldn't smell the human flesh in the food. They use some type of masking agent so you normally can't smell the taint. They have been studying us for years upon years and much of what you hear coming from government/military experiments are just a preview of things to come.
a certain modification to the mind can bring the typical human into a different frame of mind where these... "things" can be smelt/detected. there are other effects which follow, too, but the frame of mind of the individual would often be too flooded with different events occurring within and outside of the human mind/body.
Never trust a mason or someone giving you food/drink out of the blue, even if you've known these people for your entire life. always buy food at random, never return to the same product more than # of dice rolls. Always buy food and drink in sealed containers. Look for typical "Illuminati/occult" symbols and don't purchase from these companies.
Things are not what they appear to be on Earth, unless you are enabled to really see. Then you'll probably wish you never had. (like in The Matrix where the delicious fake steak is being consumed and a deal struck)
As long as the FBI has the power to authorize people to break the law, why not just get them to murder every suspect? No investigation needs to last longer than a day.
It's becoming increasingly difficult to tell law enforcement from the criminals. As a regular old boring middle aged white guy, I fear my own government more than any gang member or terrorist.
https://thinkprogress.org/supreme-court-says-ignorance-of-the-law-is-an-excuse-if-youre-a-cop-d8bdb99987f1#.e57rxa83d
"... the state argued that the cops had made a “reasonable” mistake when they pulled over Heien for having one tail light, and thus were not precluded from using the evidence that came out of that stop. This assertion is controversial in and of itself. After all, police already have such vast leeway to make traffic stops that Fourth Amendment scholar Orin Kerr recently quipped, “if an officer can’t find a traffic violation to stop a car, he isn’t trying very hard.” Now police have to try even less hard."
You are probably just being funny, but the FBI does have a habit of looking the other way when a person with money or power breaks the law. The sad part is that if Hillary becomes President, she will never have to pay for her crimes.
Gives quite an incentive to commit as many crimes as necessary to become president doesn't it?
It's perfectly reasonable for law enforcement to allow some informants to commit certain crimes while attempting to shut down a larger organization. Simply reporting the number of times that this happens says nothing one way or the other about whether the FBI is doing a good job at making use of this power.
Personally, I'm much more worried about the times that the FBI and other law enforcement agencies engage in sting operations where they use such informants to urge people to commit legal activity and then arrest them for it. Some fraction of these informants may well be doing just this sort of thing, but the report of merely the number of informants doesn't say anything about that. Here is one example of such entrapment. Quoted from the above page:
You are probably just being funny, but the FBI does have a habit of looking the other way when a person with money or power breaks the law. The sad part is that if Hillary becomes President, she will never have to pay for her crimes.
That's only true if she dies in office. Hillary is widely disliked and the GOP can nurse a grudge. The only way they'll back off is if their own panties have plenty of stains.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Hey, I wouldn't snitch to the feds unless they let me kill a few people. That's just how the world works.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
p Otherwise we could end up with the DEA smuggling drugs for the Sinaloa drug cartel, the ATF selling guns to violent criminals, or the FBI smuggling child porn.
Hmmm so Silk Road, Fast and Furious and Playpen.
Who watches the watchers?
Parent has a good point. For one, the FBI technically doesn't have the right to authorize breaking the law. Isn't that the right of a federal prosecutor or the DoJ? The FBI, for all their fancy suits and cool sunglasses are just basically cops. A cop could ignore someone breaking the law, but they aren't really supposed to. The DA looks at the evidence collected by the police and decides if there are grounds for charges. (Actually it is probably more along the lines of if they are likely to succeed in getting a successful sentience or if they will get yelled at for not at least trying to charge someone for a high profile crime.) That is why a prosecutor offers a deal or plea bargain to witnesses for cooperation, and not the arresting officer.
/. readers who are lawyers cops, & prosecutors reading this, please jump in and correct my erroneous assumptions now...
As I understand it, if the FBI is just looking the other way, they are very out of line. If they are running this by a federal prosecuter and/or a judge that is providing assistance and oversight, then this is probably a legit practice. Perhaps not very moral or prudent, though.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
By authorizing and inducing the hack of Stratfor we came to know about many things private companies and the government are doing (of course they are not going to answer for their crimes). They should encourage more people to commit crimes like invading and damaging companies like this.
Of course the rest of the FBI's entrapment activities is just for the worst of your country (and of the world with the "war on terror").
An example that gets very frequently brought up on Slashdot is how Capone was taken down by the IRS. Most people do not understand that it was because the FBI was looking the other way.
I see what you did there. You conveniently forgot to point out that while the judge did indeed say what you quoted, that same judge also sentenced all 4 men to 25 years in prison anyway. The sentences were upheld on appeal 2-1 with all 3 judges rejecting the entrapment and government misconduct issues raised by defendants.
What is the word "otherwise" there for? It simply is illegal activity.
Twinstiq, game news
According to Thomas Hobbes, whose philosophy holds sway over political circles the FBI is the law and can injure no one.