The mentality of J Edgar Hoover’s FBI undergirds today’s surveillance state

Everyone seems to forget that the FBI is the NSA's primary partner in the latter's domestic spying operations and that, in fact, the NSA's job would be impossible without them. Whenever you see a company deny giving any data to the NSA remember: It's because it's not the NSA asking (or demanding) the information of them, it's the FBI.

I worked at a company that had been started in 1950 by an abusive sexually aggressive alcoholic. He was long, long gone in 1985, but the top people still acted just as he’d acted decades before. In studying organization behavior you learn that the entire organization acts like the man at the top. The behavior, what is considered right and wrong, gets passed from one generation to the next. In the same vein perhaps the greatest predictor of sexual abuse is whether the abuser was abused as a child. I think the abuse model applies here as well as bad traits get passed from one generation to the next.

If I had to reform such an organization, I don’t know that it’s possible. I’d probably say fire them all and start over from scratch. But that would hardly be fair for the many good and dedicated employees.

In my experience the problem is usually in management and very little manifested in the troops. This may be because the troops don’t have any power over others and thus can’t manifest the trait. But Hoover selected the next generation and they were all “trained.” Then those selected the next generation and so on.

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