Hacks: the baffling reason the FBI struggles to recruit computer operatives
Shock! Horror! The FBI in “a little behind the times” scandal!
Yeah, anyone who’s expecting the literal Feds to be on the cutting edge of modern culture is more than a little delusional. However, it’s understandable to think that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the domestic security and intelligence service of the most powerful country in the world (at the time of writing), would at least try to know which way the wind is blowing culturally, especially when that changing culture might singlehandedly torpedo one of the most important roles one can have in intelligence in the 21st century.
You see, don’t tell anyone you heard this from me, but computers? Yeah, the thing you’re reading these words on? They’re kind of important these days. In fact, there’s an argument to be made that they’re more important than people at the moment, and not just because of the vast amounts of sensitive data being stored on them at any given time. Thus, no matter what you might see in a James Bond or Jason Bourne movie, the life of an intelligence operative is less dramatic shootouts in volcano bases and more spending 72 hours straight trying to crack a particularly brutal database.
Thus, you’re going to need hackers. The kind of people who look at said databases, laugh derisively, and then reveal they broke into it over lunch, so get back to them when you have an actual challenge. There’s no shortage of them around at the moment, and as you can probably imagine, the FBI needs as many of them as they can possibly get. However, one aspect of the Feds’ hiring policy is absolutely hamstringing them these days.
Why are the FBI struggling to hire hackers?
So, it turns out hackers also like drugs. Now, I know that we’re not living in the 1950s anymore, and the vast, vast majority of people in the world like drugs, but hackers are apparently a special case, which checks out.
If your brain is operating at the level that it needs to be a decent hacker, you’re going to want to shut it off and actually enjoy a moment or two from time to time. That’s not even taking into account the fact that hackers are a counter-cultural bunch and are probably not dissuaded from spending some time with a delightful lady called Mary Jane due to its questionable legality in some states.
Perhaps that’s the core problem with the FBI trying to employ hackers. A lot of them are not going to want to be a literal Fed, but there are always a few willing to give up and go straight. The problem is the FBI’s hiring policy. One has to have abstained from weed for three years before starting work with them. For heavier substances like cocaine and ecstasy, it’s ten years. You can theoretically still secure a job with them if you have indulged, but you have to wait out those years before you get started. If you already work for the Feds and you take something, that’s you outta there for at least three years.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. It seems strange that a federal service all about monitoring its own country would have that much backward thinking at its very core. I put it to you, though, that the FBI’s current director is Donald Trump puppet Kash Patel. Would you expect anything different from them?