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Comment by crb002 | Hacker News Reader

The FBI couldn't be trusted to take down Silk Road without lining the pockets of their agents. This is a recipe for massive corporate espionage.

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I understand your point, but the corrupt Silk Road agents (at least the ones that are known at this time) were actually from the DEA and Secret Service.[1] Corrupt FBI agents, while they exist and can cause incredible damage, are reasonably rare. For instance John Connolly[2], Robert Hanssen[3], Paul Rico[4]

[1] https://www.wired.com/2016/11/ross-ulbrichts-lawyers-point-a...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Connolly_(FBI)

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hanssen

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Paul_Rico

What evidence do you have that corrupt FBI agents are rare? Just because OUTSIDERS have only publicly caught a few does not suggest those are the only ones.

There is also more to the problem than corrupt individuals. Sometimes incorrect attitudes (racism, mistrust of whistleblowers, unjust patriotism) can result in organizations doing awful and immoral things even if single members are not publicly charged with a crime.

Or when an organization believes it knows better than the constitution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_R._Clapper#False_testimo...)

The rogue silk road "agents" were part of DEA and Secret Service. If you can get basic facts about this correct, please don't spread mis-information.

Do you think that distinction is substantive? Do you think there's some reason to believe that FBI agents are morally superior to the DEA and Secret Service?

As I see it, the illegal and immoral activities of individiuals within acronym agencies comes down to group think, tribalism, and a removal of separation of powers which this country was founded on. If a DEA agent does it, I think that increases the odds the FBI will do it.

That is like saying if any police organization is corrupt in any way, then we can assume they all are deeply corrupt.

So, yes, the distinction is substantive.

Well, no that's a little different. If one out of thousands of police organizations were corrupt, that would offer little evidence that the average one is.

If one out of 5 acronym agencies is corrupt, that's a 20% corruption rate.

Now of course one incident doesn't prove a whole organization is bad. But it does show the processes used by that organization have insufficient oversight to prevent it.

Moreover, it's not simply one case. Yes, the comment brought up an isolated case, but there are many more known cases, and I'm curious how many unknown cases there are....

I feel like your arguments have been willfully oversimplifying and I question what your dog in this fight is.

When creating policies we should assume all human organizations are corrupt.

"If any corporation is corrupt, all others must be too"

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