[paranormal]

This isn't germane to the discussion.

> FBI Agents are busy flying to Iceland working on Hollywood's vision for the future of who owns the internet, data, and computers

Wikileaks has very little to do with Hollywood. Whether you sympathize with Wikileaks or not, hopefully it makes sense that since they have publicly released federal secrets, the Federal Bureau of Investigation would be charged with investigating them, right?

I make no comment on whether the handling of the investigation has been appropriate.

As for the rest of the post, I think you're trying to make the point that our "national effort" (of which there is seemingly be a finite pool) is being expended on an overseas investigations, so we couldn't fix weapons legislation or prosecute white-collar criminals.

I disagree. There's nothing to suggest that either of those problems would be fixed if those FBI agents were doing anything else. Frankly, neither of those problems exist for lack of effort.

> I know the FBI has to be irreproachable enough to resist the collective action of Mafias and cults/sects, which would make it a tough system to get rid of, even if it devolves into the Ministry of life/Ministry of truth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Truth)

Could you explain, specifically, how the FBI is becoming substantially similar to the Ministry of Truth? It would help if you could explain who, by name, and what initiatives are responsible for this.

[btilly]

In theory the FBI is supposed to be responsible for domestic security, the CIA for international. Wikileaks is about as international as you could want and therefore shouldn't really be in the FBI's ballpark.

[jackpirate]

That's wrong. The GP is right. The FBI is responsible for investigating any leak of US secrets. They will investigate if the CIA leaks secrets, the military leaks secrets, or Russian agents steal American secrets.

[sesqu]

So what is the CIA responsible for? Stealing Wikileaks's secrets?

[dredmorbius]

The CIA is responsible for intelligence, not law enforcement, domestic or otherwise.

[reinhardt]

So would this be a non-story if it was CIA involved instead of FBI?

[btilly]

Ironically the opposite would happen.

People hear CIA and thoughts of horrible conspiracy theories overwhelm. But it is in abstract principle the more appropriate organization to have gotten involved.

[lostlogin]

It's not hard when they kidnap people, take them to far away countries and torture them. If any non-US allies behaved like this we would never hear the end of it.

[genwin]

There are more crimes committed under their purview than they have the resources to investigate. Therefore they should prioritize. They obviously prioritized wrongly here.