Hacker News Reader

Comment by eps | Hacker News Reader

The FBI is not a spy network.

You are being pedantic.

I have 2 family members who are/were special agents for the FBI. Much of their job is harvesting evidence to build cases by spying, which frequently comes more in the form of “spying” in the way we saw in The Sopranos.

The FBI is also the premier counter-espionage organization within the US, so it is tasked with spying on suspected foreign / turned spies.

It is much more than a spy network, but it is exactly that as well.

All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life. You don't have to be a suspect to fall within their panopticon.

> All cleared citizens are subject to warrantless search at any time by the FBI, some for the remainder of their life.

That claim deserves a source.

It's buried in EO12333

That’s at least partly because upping application for a security clearance, they are signing a contract to do that.

We don’t know how much the Trump political officials managed to avoid those onboarding requirements. It has been widely reported that at least some of them bypassed eligibility requirements and polygraph. It’s probably not a huge leap to assume these same people were not required to consent to these forever-after-searches.

While I understand why you would say that, I think the way "spy network" was meant, was in the way that their job is to spy within the US. And given the resources at their disposition, and the size of the US, "worlds biggest spy network" is not wrong.

Also, they do head up the main counterintelligence effort of the US.

How the mighty have fallen.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com