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FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

nytimes.com

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Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#71

Post by yonaguska »

Zamicol wrote: post #27
theandrewbailey wrote: post #2

Defund the FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, and DEA. They've proven themselves to cause more trouble than to solve problems.

We need public auditing of these organizations. Organization that operate secretly will always provide some refuge for corruption. There are always blind spots for management. If the public has no input, how can we ever trust them?

How do you hold an entity accountable when that entity has the capability to destroy any single individual with no repercussions?

Accountability is further complicated by the fact that the entity is political in nature, so the FBI has actual partisan backing through politicians, the court system, and even down to individual jurists.

I honestly don't know what the solution is myself.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#72

Post by boomboomsubban »

I was curious what they had after ~1974 so looked at the file, and roughly 200 pages of the 270 total are a 2005 incident where a fan sold/uploaded bootleg recordings of her work. As an aside, it's amusing to see screenshots of webpages complete with ancient online ads that appear to have been printed out then scanned in the report. And another aside, I believe they redacted the soft drink offered to the fan during questioning, which the fan refused.

Besides that she played a show with Journey in a venue that supposedly had mob connections in the 80's.

I wonder if they ruled her harmless after 74 or a different organization took over/the documents have a different classification.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#73

Post by micromacrofoot »

jaywalk wrote: post #66
hackerlight wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Add ICE in there. They serve no useful purpose.

Is this sarcasm?

No. ICE was created in 2003 and largely overlaps with existing agencies. It's a bunch of post-9/11 security theater.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#74

Post by jmull »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #2

Defund the FBI, CIA, NSA, ATF, and DEA. They've proven themselves to cause more trouble than to solve problems.

I know this is more of an emotional response than a serious proposal, but I'll take the opportunity to point out:

Black-and-white thinking leads to very inefficient outcomes.

That is, it makes a lot more sense to reign-in, reform, and redirect intelligence and policing agencies than get rid of them.

I think we want to work on how to align their interests -- as individual agents, intermediate commanding officers, and agency-wide -- with ours as citizens.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#76

Post by mansion7 »

pjc50 wrote: post #45
prange wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I made no comment about it being right or wrong, and I don’t know whether the grandparent is a trump supporter or not. The more interesting question is to consider why Trump would hold this view, especially if you disagree with him on other things. Perhaps you don’t have the same assumptions about the reasons why as he does.

Trump is against the FBI because they're investigating him. It's not that deep.

We do know that at least two FBI agents were found to have conspired against him during his first campaign.

We also know that an FBI attorney falsified information to get warrants against his campaign advisor.

We know that the FBI urged the media to actually censor negative news about his political opponents.

It would be difficult to them trust such an organization to them perform fair investigations against you after those occurrences, regardless of one's political party.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#77

Post by 15155 »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #67
fsociety999 wrote: post #62

The FBI is more or less a legalized criminal organization that is funded by U.S. taxpayers, but is unelected and unaccountable to them. This article is from 2013, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this behavior has changed: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-in... The important part to consider: > The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single…

If you could make the case that it’s necessary then what are we even talking about here?

Do the ends justify the means?

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#78

Post by frellus »

wmeredith wrote: post #53
wil421 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m afraid if you were to defund some of those, like the DEA and ATF, they would just come after small time, lowest fruit criminals. They have proven they will charge people with dubious crimes. Similar to how people claim the IRS can’t tackle big time cheats and instead focus on auditing everyday people. If you modernize federal drug laws the DEA would lose at lot of its teeth. It’s up to the legislatures to change…

> I’m afraid if you were to defund some of those, like the DEA and ATF, they would just come after small time, lowest fruit criminals. That's precisely what would happen. Look at what's become of the IRS. It's been systematically defunded, despite the fact that the government sees a huge return on investment when they spend dollars there. The IRS has stated publicly that they only go after middle and lower-class citi…

"return on investment" ... you realize how that sounds, right?

The good news is with the new "investment" of my tax dollars into the tax and audit arm of the government, they can no go after the top tax dollars AND middle and lower-class citizen "offenders"! Yea!

Let's kill the income tax entirely, it's a completely unfair system. Middle and lower class would thrive, and the "big guys" would not notice because none of their real "income" is taxed, it's designed not to be taxed.

Re: FBI Monitored Aretha Franklin for Years, File Shows

#79

Post by dekken_ »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #67
fsociety999 wrote: post #62

The FBI is more or less a legalized criminal organization that is funded by U.S. taxpayers, but is unelected and unaccountable to them. This article is from 2013, but I haven’t seen anything to suggest that this behavior has changed: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/04/fbi-in... The important part to consider: > The FBI gave its informants permission to break the law at least 5,658 times in a single…

If you could make the case that it’s necessary then what are we even talking about here?

Make whatever case you want, doesn't mean anyone has to accept it.
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