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This isn't germane to the discussion.

> FBI Agents are busy flying to Iceland working on Hollywood's vision for the future of who owns the internet, data, and computers

Wikileaks has very little to do with Hollywood. Whether you sympathize with Wikileaks or not, hopefully it makes sense that since they have publicly released federal secrets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be charged with investigating them, right?

I make no comment on whether the handling of the investigation has been appropriate.

As for the rest of the post, I think you're trying to make the point that our "national effort" (of which there is seemingly be a finite pool) is being expended on an overseas investigations, so we couldn't fix weapons legislation or prosecute white-collar criminals.

I disagree. There's nothing to suggest that either of those problems would be fixed if those FBI agents were doing anything else. Frankly, neither of those problems exist for lack of effort.

> I know the FBI has to be irreproachable enough to resist the collective action of Mafias and cults/sects, which would make it a tough system to get rid of, even if it devolves into the Ministry of life/Ministry of truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth)

Could you explain, specifically, how the FBI is becoming substantially similar to the Ministry of Truth? It would help if you could explain who, by name, and what initiatives are responsible for this.

In theory the FBI is supposed to be responsible for domestic security, the CIA for international. Wikileaks is about as international as you could want and therefore shouldn't really be in the FBI's ballpark.

That's wrong. The GP is right. The FBI is responsible for investigating any leak of US secrets. They will investigate if the CIA leaks secrets, the military leaks secrets, or Russian agents steal American secrets.

So what is the CIA responsible for? Stealing Wikileaks's secrets?

The CIA is responsible for intelligence, not law enforcement, domestic or otherwise.

So would this be a non-story if it was CIA involved instead of FBI?

Ironically the opposite would happen.

People hear CIA and thoughts of horrible conspiracy theories overwhelm. But it is in abstract principle the more appropriate organization to have gotten involved.

It's not hard when they kidnap people, take them to far away countries and torture them. If any non-US allies behaved like this we would never hear the end of it.

There are more crimes committed under their purview than they have the resources to investigate. Therefore they should prioritize. They obviously prioritized wrongly here.

> No Executive anywhere on the planet has yet to do prison time for any action, decision or behavior relating to the largest manufactured Financial Crisis since 1929.

Wrong! Iceland imprisoned multiple executives, among others.

http://www.icenews.is/2011/04/07/first-iceland-bank-crash-pr...

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-06-07/iceland-court-sente...

Iceland seems like the only country the banks don't rule.

Be careful about thinking Iceland is some utopia. Many articles in the Anglosphere seem to not have done any fact checking. Some even think Iceland is in the EU and uses the Euro.

"Iceland told the banks to f* off, why can't USA do the same" is a nice story. The truth is usually more complicated.

The truth is Iceland forced their banks to reduce the dollar amount of mortgages to within 110% of a house's retail value. If that's not telling a bank to "F OFF" then I don't know what is.

When everyone went underwater, they lowered the water level instead of putting people on stilts.

If Iceland hadn't told the banks to eff off, they would have been hugely indebted to foreign banks for a hundred years.

yeah, many people took out loans and couldn't pay them back. Iceland's answer? The banks are evil and those people shouldn't have to pay them back anyway.

It doesn't really teach responsibility.

Yeah, many banks gave out loans and then couldn't pay their other debts. America's answer? The home owners are evil and banks should be propped up and shielded from the risks they took.

It doesn't really teach responsibility.

Letting the banks fail was an option. Lehman failed. I wonder what the EU would look like now if we let the banks fail. Too big to fail is a problem though.

Too big to fail = too big to be bailed out.

Yes, but also, it's the banks who employ the financial experts who convince people that they can afford these loans that they can't really afford.

Not quite. These people, perhaps foolishly, took out loans denominated in Euro. When these banks imploded, they took a huge chunk of the Icelandic economy with them, and the Krona was heavily devalued.

Yes, people should have been more wary of taking out foreign currency-denominated loans. These banks were the reason they could never pay the loans off, though.

Not quite. "Iceland's households also racked up debts amounting to 213% of disposable income. Britons and Americans owed just 169% and 140% of disposable income respectively—figures that make them seem almost sober by comparison. "

http://www.economist.com/node/12382011?story_id=12382011

So while there were many factors involved in why these banks failed, the citizens of Iceland played a key role.

Usury that is enforced by the state is (or ought to be) a privilege, not an inalienable right. Both sides share responsibility.

Well, of course the citizens played a key role. But it doesn't mean they weren't fleeced or foolishly lent to by sleazy, greedy bankers just like everyone else in the Western world.

Even if you hold these citizens fully accountable, at least in Iceland the people who so irresponsibly led themselves to financial ruin were bailed out, rather than the banks who so irresponsibly led themselves to financial ruin.

"The analysis suggests that the share of indebted households in distress grew from 12½ per cent in early 2007 to 23½ per cent on the eve of the banking collapse in the autumn of 2008, when the lion’s share of the balance sheet shocks had already taken place. The extent of acute distress nearly quadrupled over the same period. Forbearance efforts provided temporary breathing space, but the share in distress is estimated to have peaked at 27½ per cent in autumn 2009, before declining to 20 per cent at yearend 2010 due to policy and legal interventions. Financial distress is found to be inversely related to income and age, as well as being higher among families with children and those with foreigndenominated debt than among childless couples and those with ISK-denominated loans only. Parents of every fifth child in Iceland were in distress at year-end 2010. The incidence of negative housing equity increased dramatically, from roughly 6 to 37 per cent of indebted homeowners, over the four-year period. Negative housing equity is more widespread among high-income than low-income households. The share of homeowners simultaneously in distress and negative equity rose from roughly 1 to 14 per cent but declined to 10 per cent by the end of the period. Middleincome families with children, most of which had foreign-denominated loans, and low-income singles seem especially vulnerable. Some of the seeds of households’ financial difficulties were sown by imprudent lending in 2007 and 2008, when 16 per cent of the total amount of new loans was granted to households already in distress. Up to 34 per cent of households in distress at yearend 2010 were granted loans in 2007-2008, when they were already financially distressed." http://www.cb.is/library/Skr%C3%A1arsafn---EN/Working-Papers...

Responsibility? The onus is on the banks to lend responsibly. They made outrageously risky loans and were liable for when the borrowers could not pay them back.

Bailing out the banks by putting whole populations into long term debt "doesn't really teach responsibility".

The really criminal thing is that not that we haven't found someone to prosecute but that we haven't found anyone with the cojones to break up the banks into small enough entities that can fail on an individual basis without taking out the financial system.

I'm wary of comparisons like that- the implication is that if the FBI weren't busy in Iceland they would have caught the child abductor. I don't see any evidence to suggest that is the case.

Especially since the actual visit was in 2011.

The implication was that the FBI has better things to do than to assist Hollywood in turning the world into a police state because they don't want to adjust their business models to fit 2013.

There are lots and lots of people in the US, for example, who should be prosecuted for their financial crimes, but are not, and will not be because that's how the world works these days.

What does WikiLeaks releasing US Government secrets have to do with Hollywood? This just seems like a, "Hey this story is about the FBI, and I hate the FBI! Everybody let's pile on and bash the FBI for completely unrelated reasons!"

The GP talked about FBI and Hollywood. But to be more specific, the FBI represents the US government, and there are plenty of reasons to hate it.

The GP also said that the FBI investigating WikiLeaks in Iceland was somehow pushing Hollywood's agenda, which is a pretty weak position.

Sure, it may well be. I just clarified why I was talking about FBI and Hollywood together. But really, Hollywood has actually changed the Western world towards police states. That's bad, regardless of what agencies or "channels" they've done it through.

It implies to me that they have better things to do. The crimes blatantly committed during the last financial crisis could easily be keeping every available FBI agent busy now. Instead the way things are going we'll likely see the statute of limitations run out on many major criminals who actually harmed others.

Somewhat surprised to see such a random government bashing comment making the top of the list. I'm all for criticizing the FBI but 1&2 are super remote factors, that have next to nothing to do with the actual Iceland situation.

And by the way: Are the "take the guns away" arguments really that popular now? It almost seems to take forms of the "but think of the children" meme, where people try to connect on thing to a completely unrelated subject in order to support the alleged moral superiority of their argument.

> But on the plus side, there hasn't been many terrorist attacks as have been in the middle east, so they're doing an upstanding job there.

Most of the cases the FBI has prosecuted for terrorism in the US have been entrapment cases where they supplied most all the material and know how to carry out a "bombing".

>entrapment cases

That word does not mean what you think it means. Entrapment only applies if someone is coerced to commit a crime they otherwise would not have.

In the case of the FBI's terrorism stings, the suspect was looking for allies to carry out an attack, and unknowingly contacted an undercover officer. The FBI might have supplied the "materials" and the "knowledge", but the action is all on the suspect. The FBI doesn't even swoop in for the arrest until the suspect actually tries to detonate the fake bomb.

Even in the instance of a much weaker case, where a hypothetical "radical" says "Hmm, it would be neat to blow up $building" and a hypothetical undercover officer says "Really? Well I know a guy.."

I'm finding it hard to call foul. Any sane person should recoil at the thought of indiscriminate killing and damage.

Except this is not what has been happening. There have been many stories reported of FBI actively trying to make someone into a terrorist. Some of the supposed perpetrators even contacted the police while under pressure from FBI to commit acts they would not want to do. Forgive me but I do not have time currently to dig up more than one, but this one I have fresh in my memory: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/471/t...

It's a story of a sting/long con op gone really bad. Have a listen and see that it is nothing like the hypothetical that you posted.

Edit: If anyone is interested, more similar stories can be found in democracynow.org and bestoftheleft.com podcast archives.

If the FBI supplied this guy with a fake bomb, what crime did the guy commit?

He obviously didn't commit an act of terrorism. I don't even think you can claim he /attempted/ to commit such an act since the FBI gave him a fake. So we're left with what, the desire to commit an act of terror?

>If the FBI supplied this guy with a fake bomb, what crime did the guy commit?

If you get behind the wheel of a car drunk but get home safely, what crime did you commit?

You needn't actually cause damage to break the law.

>I don't even think you can claim he /attempted/ to commit such an act since the FBI gave him a fake.

Whether the bomb or not was real doesn't change the fact that he has the mens rea to blow up a building, and considering he thought the bomb was real and took positive steps to set it up, the reus actus as well.

> If you get behind the wheel of a car drunk but get home safely, what crime did you commit?

A more accurate analogy would be that the FBI has been supplying you with lots of drink though a 3rd party informant that they pay, in cash or reduced sentencing time or both. That informant is always talking about drinking and telling you how you should drink, and then they supply you with all the liquor you could handle. Then the informant mentions you really ought to head home, why not drive? The minute you get into the car and start to drive, the authorities show up and arrest you, as they have been watching you covertly for several months while the informant does his work. Oh, and they likely selected you based on your skin color and/or religious affiliation.

> Whether the bomb or not was real doesn't change the fact that he has the mens rea to blow up a building, and considering he thought the bomb was real and took positive steps to set it up, the reus actus as well.

While this is true, some of the cases to date the FBI has prosecuted are really likely to have never occurred if informants weren't being paid to intentionally push someone towards an illegal act. Even if someone were to go through with it even without a paid informant involved, it is incredibly unethical for a policing organization to pay people to mislead people into breaking the law.

>That informant is always talking about drinking and telling you how you should drink

Without laboring the analogy too far (which was only a throwaway intended to show that you don't need to cause harm to commit crime), what would any reasonable person do in this situation, if we replace "drinking" with "blowing shit up"?

The reasonable response here is "Get away from me, you psycho moron."

If you collude with that? Willingly? To the point of setting up a "bomb" and blowing it up?

The informant didn't shove the detonator in the suspect's hands and press the button. The informant didn't set up the bomb.

>Oh, and they likely selected you based on your skin color and/or religious affiliation.

Huge citeplz here.

>While this is true, some of the cases to date the FBI has prosecuted are really likely to have never occurred if informants weren't being paid to intentionally push someone towards an illegal act.

Yours and my definition of "intentionally push" must be worlds apart. But then again, if your mindset is such that you can be convinced verbally to blow up a building that you and the person "pushing" you agree is full of innocent people that would "die".. well, let's say I don't have a lot of sympathy for that person.

Perhaps they should be involuntarily committed to a mental health institution instead of imprisoned, but this person is a danger to themselves and others.

>it is incredibly unethical for a policing organization to pay people to mislead people into breaking the law.

There's no misleading here. The people convicted so far were not "misled".

If the suspect 'pushes the button' which he believes is hooked up to a real bomb, I think it's reasonable to say that he attempted to commit a terror act.

Did you honestly just compare a shooting spree to a job in the financial industry? I am honestly astonished statements like this get absolutely no rebuttal. Please, enumerate for me the individuals who you believe are guilty and the crimes you believe they are guilty of.

As for number two, I believe that secret service is typically responsible for investigating those sorts of crimes. I may be wrong though.

Not really. Number two was not actually a crime so much as a systemic regulatory failure fueled by greed and stupidity (Iceland's banks perpetrating some of the more egregious stupidity).

>While FBI Agents are busy flying to Iceland working on Hollywood's vision for the future of who owns the internet, data, and computers, the following is allowed to happen:

You're acting as if the FBI devoted all of their efforts towards this.