Heh Comey: Stick It, Jackass « The Burning Platform

Heh Comey: Stick It, Jackass « The Burning Platform

Guest Post by Karl Denninger

Someone needs to answer for what looks to me to be a demand for intentional violations of the Constitution, the 4th Amendment and common sense while ignoring the agency’s own failures and jacking off instead of doing their damn job.

While Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director James Comey didn’t make the case that encrypted communications aided terrorists who launched attacks in San Bernadino, Calif., and Paris, in testimony Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary he pleaded his case for tech companies to allow government access to encrypted data.

Comey may call the encryption issue a “business model question,” Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Staff Attorney Andrew Crocker wrote in a Wednesday blog, “it’s clear that what the FBI wants is what it has always wanted: access to all encrypted data, both secure communications and data at rest.”

I’ll tell you what the “business model” problem is: The FBI, and government generally, plays with itself instead of taking the money, time and resources we give them and doing their damn job.

The FBI required exactly zero access to interdict Malik, nor did immigration, nor did any other law enforcement agency.  We now know this to be a fact.

WASHINGTON — Tashfeen Malik, who with her husband carried out the massacre in San Bernardino, Calif., passed three background checks by American immigration officials as she moved to the United States from Pakistan. But none uncovered what Ms. Malik had made little effort to hide — that she talked openly on social media about her views on violent jihad.

She said she supported it. And she said she wanted to be a part of it.

Malik talked openly on social media.  She did not use encryption.  She did not keep it to herself.  She posted it in public, where anyone who cared could see it, but nobody in our government gave a good damn.

She and her husband underwent three separate background checks in the process of gaining the ability to come and stay here as a “fiancee.”  Three separate times the government allegedly looked at her and her history and but for them playing with themselves instead of doing their damn jobs they would have discovered that she was stating where anyone who cared to look could see it that she supported and wanted to be a part of violent jihad.

How much more clear does it get?

This is not about guns.  These two built bombs, which I remind you are prohibited.  That didn’t matter to them, did it?  Of course not; once you’re willing to commit murder all the other crimes are free.

This is about a government that claims to have a “Homeland Security” department and “Immigration Department” that allegedly checks out people who come here to this country to live to see if their terrorists but doesn’t do their job; they instead play with themselves, collecting a paycheck, and then refuse to take responsibility when they let someone like Malik in despite multiple opportunities to look.

This isn’t about one missed opportunity.  It’s about three separate background checks and two in-person interviews, none of which resolved to “heh, we better check this chika out a bit more carefully.”

Why not?  Who’s responsible for that?  Who’s going to get indicted for gross negligence and why isn’t Comey on that list?

Isn’t that really the central question here before we start talking about guns or, for that matter, any sort of intrusion when it comes to privacy, encryption and so-called business practices?