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."

Comments

How does that work?

[fsckinhippies]

I authorize you to break the law. Are they above the law or refusing to enforce the law? Not much difference.

Re:How does that work?

[Harlequin80]

No it is an authority which is specifically given to various arms of law enforcement. The level of the crime to be authorised changes who must sign off on it. Authorization of violent crimes are not allowed by field agents and serious offenses must first be approved by federal prosecutors.

The obvious example is allowing a street corner drug dealer to keep dealing in order to catch their supplier.

Were these actions necessary?

[ITRambo]

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.

Re:Were these actions necessary?

[Harlequin80]

You are right that it will be a combination of both. But if your aim is, for example, to bust a drug cartel then sticking every street dealer you find in prison will make that extremely difficult if not impossible.

The real issues come about when law enforcement ends up working too closely with a particular person turning a blind eye to their activities to target others. James Bulger is a prime example of this.

Re:Cut out the middle man

[BringsApples]

Your logic is sound. The reason that it's not really happening that way is because the FBI isn't interested in making the world a better place. They're interested in getting as much money as possible. And they're not doing it for any reason, other than the same reasons that the drug cartels do it. I'm talking to you, guy who invented Civil Forfeiture.

More about entrapment, less about informants

[Chalnoth]

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:

The judge criticized not only the defendants, but also what she viewed as the government's overzealous handling of the investigation. Referring to Cromitie, she said, "The essence of what occurred here is that a government, understandably zealous to protect its citizens from terrorism, came upon a man both bigoted and suggestible, one who was incapable of committing an act of terrorism on his own. It created acts of terrorism out of his fantasies of bravado and bigotry, and then made those fantasies come true." She added, "The government did not have to infiltrate and foil some nefarious plot – there was no nefarious plot to foil." She said the defendants were "not political or religious martyrs," but "thugs for hire, pure and simple."

Re:Migration of criminals

[yzf750]

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.
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