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Comment by dogman144 | Hacker News Reader

After reading a long form interview with a FBI Whistleblower out of their Minneapolis counter-terror office (will link if I find it), working in another part of the govt myself in a previous life, and having some exposure to FBI tech recruiting and related programs, I am convinced large parts of the FBI are horribly inept at providing their core competencies in a changing world.

They display the dangerous balance of huge scale and access with an inability to hire well outside of key roles (legal for people trending DoJ, special agents in flagpole jobs, etc).

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I actually have my own video evidence of how inept they are. At a previous job they raided our office and when they told me to turn off the building's surveillance cameras, I started recording with my phone. They didn't understand what VMware ESXi was and kept trying to take an image of the drives to no avail. They had our backup appliance with a years worth of snapshots but that wasn't enough. They actually already had snapshots from the cloud provider before the raid but INSISTED the physical server must be imaged or taken. Finally I made a deal with them to take half of our RAID10 and not take the whole server.

It's just a self fulfilling loop because as they become more inept fewer and fewer competent people will choose this role. They have been in decline since at least the 80s it's a problem for a lot of government agencies.

IMO this is going to be the biggest problem to result from bloated SV salaries. Government departments have been experiencing a brain drain ever since the 80s, and that has only accelerated.

We saw so much science and tech progress during the world wars and the cold war, because the best engineering jobs were working for gov contractors. Now, the best paid jobs are working for CRUD app widget factories that serve ads.

The government needs to seriously step up its efforts to recruit exceptional talent, pay exceptional salaries, and be ruthless about cutting the fat (especially people who sit in easy jobs and contribute little).

If not, it will only be a couple more decades before the government is completely unable to carry out many of its core functions such as law enforcement effectively.

Yes, agreed.

Govt tech jobs I got into late stage interviews via a special talent initiative:

- GS 7/9, would not budge, even with my existing pay stubs that I provided.

- FBI specifically was the offer to move to Huntsville AL, while I lived in a coastal tech center. They built a new facility there for logical govt reasons, illogical for tech recruiting though.

- An askance look/nasty attitude from the initiative when I was laid it out - I make $120k in my first Eng job, can you get anywhere close to that/not $60k/yr for a job in DC? If not I have to drop this scholarship/w-e they called it. I did, and got a job in private sector a month later at $150k and remote. They’re killing their talent base.

Totally absurd. And I’m a candidate that would take a pay cut for a compelling govt job.

Since you are in govt, you surely know the DoJ lawyers and district attorneys approved every step of this.

So it’s not like a random FBI agent or even office decided to do this, it was assuredly brought high up into the DoJ and approved.

Let’s not forget that federal or local judges then approved the warrants.

So it’s more accurate to say the federal persecution machine did this, not just the FBI.

I’m not in govt. but, based on past experiences, imo you’re misattributing structured intent to general bureaucratic haze. The “assuredly” part gives that away for me.

The organizational prowess and intent that people assume is present there rarely is. It’s present when you get to certain teams and levels.

More often than not It’s civil servant teams trying their best to replicate organizational processes taught in an MBA program.

> it was assuredly brought high up into the DoJ and approved.

The warrant was approved, but the issue at hand is that these safety deposit boxes were raided when "the warrant authorizing the raid explicitly forbade the FBI from seizing the safe deposit boxes or their contents."

IIRC judges aren't exactly lining up to throw the book at the feds when they misbehave. I'd love to to hear from someone more well informed though -- do judges just look the other way?

The FBI's recruiting process remains wildly confusing to me. They apparently want experienced applicants, ideally with advanced degrees. But they want these applicants to be okay with taking massive pay cuts (like more than 50% in some cases), required 50 hour minimum work weeks, and being assigned anywhere in the country with no input. And that doesn't even account for dealing with their infamous bureaucracy.

Also, you can be personally and criminally liable for a lot more than the average job. I'll pass on any job that requires you to swear an oath.

10 yrs no weed as well or something absurd. What college kids do they think they’re going to get.

Re inept in changing world from ~30yr ago, lookup Operation Sundevil and Steve Jackson games

Ya I didn’t dig into it but reading the FBI’s records on surveillance writers in the 50’s (some writer published them into a book), not a great look.

That was the Secret Service, not that I would expect the FBI to have been more aware.

The guy’s name was Terry Albury IIRC.

Yes correct, thanks.

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