22 September 2005

FBI Goes Simon Leis On America

The FBI is diverting agents and resources to fight porn. It is an initiative of Alberto Gonzales, perhaps to shore up support from the religious right. Congress provided funding for the anti-obscenity initiative, which is different from that of the previous Atty General, John Ashcroft. His crusade was against child porn, whereas Gonzales's is against adult porn.

The initiative was apparently met with mockery and derision among FBI agents, one of whom said 'I guess this means we've won the war on terror.'

The FBI's top 10 priorites at present are:

1. Protect the United States from terrorist attack.
2. Protect the United States against foreign intelligence operations and espionage.
3. Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes.
4. Combat public corruption at all levels.
5. Protect civil rights.
6. Combat transnational and national criminal organizations and enterprises.
7. Combat major white-collar crime.
8. Combat significant violent crime.
9. Support federal, state, county, municipal, and international partners.
10. Upgrade technology to successfully perform the FBI’s mission.

Where should anti-obscenity fit in?


The WaPo article "Recruits Sought for Porn Squad" is here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

8 agents out of 12,156 in the total FBI. that is .00065%. That shows that it is not a high priority but still something that they feel needs to be addressed

WestEnder said...

Everybody in the FBI is not an agent, so your stats are wrong. Also, the agents are taken from only the Washington pool, not the nationwide pool. So the stats are wrong on that basis as well.

But if you got the total workforce figure (source?), perhaps you can get the salient figures and post updated stats.

Anonymous said...

no my numbers are not wrong but thanks for playing. There are 28,576 FBI employees and 12,156 special agents.

http://www.fbi.gov/page2/aug04/workforce082504.htm

WestEnder said...

Ah, yes, I misinterpreted your comment to mean 8 agents out of a total workforce of 12,156 rather than a total agent pool of 12,156.

It is indeed a small number, but interestingly enough it leads to the opposite question: if the anti-obscenity initiative is important enough to put resources towards, why put so few resources towards it?

My only guess is that the nature of the porn business is such that it can be easily investigated and does not really need much manpower or funding.

Anonymous said...

I think you are correct that it wont require a lot of manpower or funding to work on the few areas of porn that were mentioned in the article- beastiality, urination, defecation and S & M.

Seems like much ado about nothing. Very little money very little resources to a small problem. Seems to me they listed it as a high priority in the ad placement so people would be interested. Who wants to work for something that doesnt matter? The press got a hold of a few smart asses and we get a story in the washington post. People then want to paint bush as a prude taking away adults playboys and the story grows legs