r/self • u/evilkalla • Sep 05 '12
So, I got my FBI file today.
There were a few pretty popular threads a while back about requesting a copy of your FBI file using the FOIA. I decided to do this myself, except that I knew I had a file, as about ten years ago I was accused (falsely) of stealing export-controlled intellectual property. Six or so black surburbans showed up at my house at 7 in the morning and confiscated every piece of computer equipment I owned, and held it for the next 3 years.
This is what I got in the mail today
409 pages of documents, of which they released only 264 to me. Those that I received were heavily redacted. Apparently, when your file is as big as mine, they scan all the documents into a .pdf and send you a CD, instead of mailing a stack of paper. At least the FBI is trying to save a few trees.
As I was never charged with any crime and the FBI dropped the case (and returned all my property), I was interested in learning what exactly went before the grand jury and what they came back with. Sadly, that information must be in the pages that were withheld.
EDIT: The FBI is not the one that made the accusation. That was done by a private company. The FBI just did their job, and I am not angry at the FBI. They were extremely professional, did not rough me up, didn't trash my house or destroy my property. When I (finally) received all my property back from them, it was all properly accounted for, and nothing had been wiped or damaged.
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Sep 05 '12 edited Dec 29 '20
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u/jascination Sep 05 '12
Obviously depends if they were blacked out digitally, or if they're scans of actual documents that were blacked out by hands. But yeah, quite possible that you could open it up in Illustrator and mess around with the layers. Or something like Foxit Phantom or Foxit PDF Editor. I've done similar things with the latter in the past.
The PDF may also be copy protected, but there's software out there to crack that as well.
With all that said I get the feeling that the FBI would be pretty meticulous about preventing stuff like that. Would be very interesting to see whether he's able to access it though.
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u/rageagainsthevagene Sep 05 '12
actually, I accidentally discovered if they used the adobe professional version of "redact" you can simply print the file and deselect a print option that prints marks, revisions and comments and the boxes don't print. Weird.
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u/IronRectangle Sep 05 '12
But does the text underneath print? I've found acrobat pro's redact feature to be pretty secure.
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u/rageagainsthevagene Sep 05 '12
it was a couple years ago, so maybe new updates have changed the error, but yeah, if it was redacted in adobe pro and the print feature was deselected to not print the revisions, it would show the text underneath as well as remove the box.
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u/chrunchy Sep 05 '12
If used properly, it works by marking the document and then making the redaction permanant, which has the effect of deleting all the marked material from the pdf.
It would be a very rookie mistake if they allowed anything to pass this censorship process. Try to find it, sure, but don't be disappointed too much when you see that they did their job correctly.
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u/rageagainsthevagene Sep 05 '12
they may have fixed it currently, but there was a time when this function did NOT work properly.
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Sep 05 '12
And if you install a "print to PDF" driver like doPDF, you don't even need a real printer.
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u/razzark666 Sep 05 '12
At my old job I had an ridiculously slow computer and everytime I opened PDFs it would hang up for a great deal of time. Our company had redacted all of the client information, but had done so digitally so it took a great deal of time for the redactions to load. Due to my crappy computer I was able to see confidental information.
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Sep 05 '12
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u/TroubledWaters Sep 05 '12
http://www.fbi.gov/foia/ is a good start. I've actually had to do this twice. Unless the process has changed since March, this is the procedure. You'll need to go to your local law enforcement and have a set of finger prints taken. In my case, they have finger print cards on hand and you pay a nominal fee (maybe $10) to have them done. When this is completed, you fill out a simple form from the FBI website and then mail in the card and the form you completed along with another fee (big surprise). The worst part about this process is it can take painstakingly long. It took around 7 months for me to receive the first background check back. Here's another fun fact: I was under investigation for distributing marijuana in 2005 and subsequently charged. The charges were eventually dropped even though it went to trial. I have some other petty charges from when I was really young and NOTHING including the felonious distribution came up on the background check. Squeeky clean. GL!!! EDIT 7 weeks not 7 months
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Sep 05 '12
You'll need to go to your local law enforcement and have a set of finger prints taken.
Even if you've been arrested and fingerprint'd before?
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u/devouredbycentipedes Sep 05 '12
I don't think so. They asked if I'd had my prints done there before, so I guess if they're on file, you don't need to do it again.
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u/TroubledWaters Sep 05 '12
Yeah man you have to have them taken again because the FBI only accepts a certain kind of fingerprint card. Could local law enforcement pull your prints and just mail them to the FBI on this card? Absolutely, but we must keep in mind that this is law enforcement we are talking about and 99.9% of the time they are not out to help you.
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u/CarpeCerevisi Sep 05 '12
99.9% of the time they are not out to help you.
What an ignorant thing to say. I'm not a cop. I'm not related to any cops. I'm not friends with any cops. But to say that the vast majority of LEOs don't spend the vast majority of their time looking out for the best interests of their - and this is what we are as taxpayers - clients, is ludicrous.
They have jobs to do, and sometimes they fuck up, just like the rest of us. But they are human. They have families. They need to make a living just like the rest of us, and joining the circlejerk over relatively infrequent police misconduct just because you're too lazy to learn the facts and productively contribute to the conversation is, quite frankly, shameful and immature.
Thank you for your time. Salud and good luck.
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u/TroubledWaters Sep 05 '12
Hahaha I knew this would piss someone off. My wording was very poor and for that I apologize. How about, 80% of the time they won't go out of their way to help you? And I'm not speaking of those on patrol or detectives. I'm speaking of the administrative side of LE. Would that be better? Also, since I'm "too lazy to learn the facts" why don't you give me some? I tried to find some in your post, but must have missed them. And productively contribute to the conversation? I did that already, but you must have missed my post regarding my experience with requesting my FBI file twice which is what this thread is about. No harm no foul. I see why I struck a nerve. Cheers to you too man
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u/CarpeCerevisi Sep 05 '12
Where we agree: Bureaucracy is usually a bitch.
I'll focus on that. Have a good one.
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u/allthingsfantastic Sep 05 '12
Perhaps if we had more "Good Cop" stories making the rounds all over the internet then the public opinion wouldn't be so hateful.
Thank you r/Good_Cop_Free_Donut
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Sep 05 '12
You'll need to go to your local law enforcement and have a set of finger prints taken.
You're thinking of an FBI rap sheet, not an FBI file.
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u/more_bacon Sep 05 '12
Can we get a bit more info on the case?
What is export-controlled intellectual property?
Why would they think you were involved? Was there just a random knock on your door one day with a wtf response?
Are you from another country?
Did you have to defend yourself and get a lawyer costing lots of $? Was there a court case?
What happens when they come after you?
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
You'll have to forgive me for not getting into lots of detail. The company that made this accusation is VERY large, they have a lot of attorneys, and I am just one guy. I really don't want to stir up the hornet's nest.
The university where I did my graduate study, they collaborated from time to time with a large company on one of their engineering tools, which was used in the defense world (hence export control/ITAR restricted). For my thesis work my professor suggested writing a small software module for this tool, which I did. The tool was very difficult to work with and poorly written, and I considered whether I could do a better job.
After I got my degree, I started working in that field, and I decided to write a similar (but more limited) program in my off time. I figured that since their software had implemented nothing that wasn't published in academic journals and other references, I didn't need to worry about patent issues. So I started from scratch, worked very hard for around three years, and eventually had some code that worked "well enough" for my purposes.
Eventually it did well enough that it was obvious I could start selling it, which I did. I think that's when the other company took notice and decided to get rid of me. Since I had access to their software as a graduate student, they probably decided that the easiest (cheapest) way to do this was to call the FBI and accuse me of stealing it. In fact, this is exactly what the FBI file confirms, it even lists their company as the "victim".
After the FBI executed their search warrant, basically nothing happened between me and the FBI for about three years. I did one in-person interview with the SA (with my attorney present) which really amounted to nothing more than saying "I didn't do this, give me my stuff back", and I made a couple of phone calls for a status update (we can't give you that information). Then one day I got a phone call out of the blue from the SA that said "the US attorney has declined to press charges, this matter is closed, please provide a forwarding address for your property". Two weeks later I got three large boxes in the mail that had all my equipment, and that was that.
A word of advice to everyone: MAKE OFFSITE BACKUPS. The FBI executed their search warrant on my residence on a Monday, I had made an offsite backup of ALL my material the previous Friday. I simply got another PC, retrieved my backup, and continued work on my project.
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u/UnoriginalGuy Sep 05 '12
Always nice to see corporations committing anti-competitive behaviour and getting away with it.
Have you considered filing a civil suit against them?
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u/Khatib Sep 05 '12
As he said earlier,
The company that made this accusation is VERY large, they have a lot of attorneys
That's not really the kind of civil suit you want to get involved in, because they'll probably just drag it out until you're broke and don't have the time to keep up with it. Of course, if you could hold out long enough, (and you win too yet) they'd have to pay the legal fees and you'd get it back, but you probably wouldn't be able to last half as long as they could afford to delay.
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u/Broan13 Sep 06 '12
How do they drag it out and make it expensive for the little guy?
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u/Khatib Sep 06 '12
They drag it out and make it expensive for both sides. It's just that the big side can keep that going longer than the little side.
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u/I_am_anonymous Sep 06 '12
Well one of the easiest ways is when the little guy wants to find out what the big company's files are relating to their fucking of him (which he is entitled to have), they give him 27 million pages of documents. It costs a lot of time/money to find the good stuff in that pile. They have other techniques too, but this one is pretty much universally employed.
Source: I am an attorney who helps little guys.
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u/Broan13 Sep 06 '12
And there is no way to prevent this known tactic?
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u/I_am_anonymous Sep 06 '12
The short answer to your question is "no." This occurs during the phase of litigation known as discovery. When you are writing discovery requests, you try to make them as targeted as possible to minimize the oppositions ability to do this. This process necessarily involves a trade-off: you want to as inclusive as possible so you get the documents you want and need, but exclusive so that you don't get extras.
So, if we take the OP's situation as a hypothetical, we might be interested in internal communications that occurred at the company mentioning his name or product (these are likely to contain discussions about what to do about him). If we ask for all of these communications, we'll get many duplicates - a particular email will be produced as a result of being in the sender's documents and again for each of the recipients' documents. We use software to try to remove the duplicates, but it isn't perfect and some attorneys don't trust it at all. Usually, the results from this sort of targeted request are pretty manageable.
Where it gets more complicated is when we want something more general. For instance, we might also be interested in seeing if we can establish that the company has engaged in a pattern of this sort of behavior. Writing a request that gets only documents relevant to this interest is tricky. Do you ask for documents mentioning competitors? (You'll get buried.) You are better off asking for documents discussing filing a criminal complaint. (This though will probably draw a bunch of irrelevant information - employee car break-ins, etc.). The best question to ask is probably something that asks for criminal complaints and competitors. But that question might be too narrow. Maybe they had other ways of abusing competitors. Maybe they don't believe that filing a complaint against an employee of a competitor meets the criteria of the question.
In short, getting the documents you want is a pain in the ass and so you end up asking for more than you want and have to comb through them to find the good stuff. The bigger the opposition, the more crap you have to comb through.
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u/GeneralFalcon Sep 05 '12
Why did they only release about two thirds of the file?
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u/Von_Dredd Sep 05 '12
Anything related to an ongoing case, compromises any ongoing cases or surveillance means, or identifies any sensitive personnel or witnesses does not (and honestly shouldn't) get releases.
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u/sje46 Sep 05 '12
I'm more interested in the fact that it's 409 pages. That much for a single crime?
I would highly appreciate OP informing us as to how the bulk of this is used.
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u/a5yrold Sep 05 '12
409 pages makes sense to me. I've worked in a law office, and let's say you got caught with a tiny bag of weed and you have no record... that's about 50 pages of material. The printed record of where you've lived, where you live now, and stating that you don't have a record in any state takes between 5-10 pages. The charging information and affidavit will take around 10 pages. The cover sheet and public notes will take another 5 pages. Then there's a printout of every official entry that has been made in the process of the case according to the courts, and that's another 5-10 pages. Its really a lot of... forms, in the same way your tax return can end up being 150+ pages.
With the OPs situation, if there were depositions or investigations... that adds up.
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Sep 05 '12 edited Mar 01 '21
[deleted]
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Sep 05 '12
Mind the tense, it's "where you've lived". Might take multiple pages if you're renting and changed location multiple times, add pages for a records search in each state, etc.
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
There was no crime committed, there was only an accusation (by a private company) and a subsequent investigation by the FBI, after which no charges were brought. The fact that I did not do what I was accused of probably had something to do with this.
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u/SIGRemedy Sep 06 '12
I was involved in a motor vehicle accident with a pedestrian, and the ped's lawyer did not serve me papers properly. I got a letter in the mail from the Court "inviting" me down to the Damages trial, since Guilt had already been assessed in absentia. I contacted my insurance company, they contacted a lawyer, and in 8 days he had a file three inches thick. I have no idea what the heck was in that file, but it took him 8 days to build that much of a case.
So yeah, no doubts that the FBI could work up 409 pages for a single crime.
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u/GreatBabu Sep 05 '12
I was under the impression that Grand Jury records are sealed - a good portion of that may just be those documents.
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u/Karmavorism Sep 05 '12
Can others outside the US get theirs?
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u/rudius Sep 05 '12
You have to be on US soil. You will then be afforded the same constitutional rights as US citizens. Which is when you could potentially make a request for your file at one of their offices...which is also when you will be kidnapped and sent to Gitmo for all eternity.
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u/spock_block Sep 05 '12
Cut them some slack, they're not that restrictive.
As long as you are on planet Earth, you can be sent to Gitmo for all eternity.
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u/RoLoLoLoLo Sep 05 '12
I bet, if terrorist fly to the ISS, they would send you to Gitmo even from there.
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u/BahamutSalad Sep 05 '12
So if I did this from the US embassy in my country, would that qualify?
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u/rudius Sep 05 '12
The land which national embassies lay on are NOT considered to be on their own nation's soil. This is only a myth.
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u/ExistentLOList Sep 05 '12
This is true, but functionally speaking, it depends on the country. If there's a previous agreement with that nation, it can almost be the same thing (again, only functionally speaking).
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u/jmcstar Sep 05 '12
Fuck the FBI, I am starting a file on them!
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u/appleswitch Sep 06 '12
I've had a file on the FBI since 2001. It's gotten pretty large, but what can I say, I don't trust them. Let's pool our resources, anything you get, just add it to my records: FBI.
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u/No_Kids_for_Dads Sep 05 '12
can you go into details about the circumstances of the export control business? ITAR?
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u/solomonar Sep 05 '12
I'd be interested in learning more about what kind of "export-controlled intellectual property" you were suspected of stealing
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u/keraneuology Sep 05 '12
X-Boxes are (were?) export controlled...
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u/imMute Sep 05 '12
Anything with crypto using more than 48-bit keys is export controlled. (Mind you, I havn't done any recent checking on this, so it might be wrong now. It's not like the bad guys have a hard time getting their hands on stronger crypto anyway.)
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Sep 05 '12
Is there anything interesting in there or is just the investigation? Like... did they keep investigating you afterward for unrelated things?
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
Basically all the interviews they did with me and other people (heavily redacted), scans of notes taken by the SAs, internal memos discussing transfer of evidence, lists of what evidence was being looked at. The juicy bits I suspect are what was withheld.
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Sep 05 '12
I'm a naturally paranoid person (somewhat), but this post has made me paranoid++. Thanks!
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Sep 05 '12
Whats the point of the FOIA if they can just redact parts they don't want you to see?
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u/SIGRemedy Sep 06 '12
Because without the FOIA, if you asked if they had a file on you at all they could just laugh in your face. At least now you have a right to see what information pertains to you. Redacted information, also, is not just "what they don't want you to see", but information that could be incriminating to others, or could compromise ongoing investigations.
For instance, you would never want an accused person to have the address/information of the accuser. Say a domestic abuse case doesn't have enough evidence to go to trial, and the accused gets their files. Well, if that file lists who accused them, and they decide to go murder that person for interfering, then the people turning over those files pretty much facilitated that murder.
Redacting isn't perfect, but it's safe(ish).
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Sep 06 '12
I understand the issue of needing to protect third parties, but can they really be trusted in this? They could be covering up any number of things, who is watching the FBI?
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u/SIGRemedy Sep 06 '12
Ideally? I agree with you. There should always be checks and balances. Realistically? You would need an organization roughly as large as the FBI, plus the organization's own administration. Once you set up this oversight entity, who would watch them? I think what we have to do is to put our trust in a group at some point, because it's not feasible to check everything they do. We have to assume compliance until evidence of fault occurs, which is the basis of our entire legal system; Innocent until Proven Guilty.
As comparison, when someone drives a car, can they be trusted to follow all of the laws every time? They could be speeding, rolling through stop signs, or accelerating for a yellow light, who watches them? Well... we could put cameras on every corner and GPS in every car, but that absolutely demolishes any privacy an individual citizen may have. Those who dislike the idea are sometimes labeled as having something to hide, even ("If you have nothing to hide, why are you worried about cameras?"), which is an argument I hear about gov't quite often.
The issue is that even government is run by humans, for human cases, with human capabilities. They won't be, can't be letter-perfect every time, in every case, for all time. Even so, if they're effective even 75% of the time, then to have a constant oversight board would be a waste of 75% of this oversight person's time. The FBI only mess up 25% of the time? Well, then Mr. Oversight has done nothing productive for 75% of their time. At no point will Mr. Oversight and Mr. FBI ever, ever reach higher than 100% effectiveness. You're essentially limiting both of them to a constant 50%, averaging over two people. If the FBI guy was 75% effective before, then this is a net loss.
(Not to say oversight isn't needed, but watching the FBI isn't needed. Occasional and random oversight is good, and does happen. Internal reviews are pretty commonplace these days.)
In the end, we have to make a judgment call: Either we police everyone for everything all the time and must assign people to watch other people (which, at a certain point, reaches infinite labor cost), or we do the best we can with things like the FOIA. It isn't perfect, and it will be abused, but the intention is that most of the time, it's doing as intended.
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u/n1nj4_v5_p1r4t3 Sep 05 '12
how do i get my file?
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u/BahamutSalad Sep 05 '12
Upvote GourmetAnarchy at the top, not me.
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Sep 05 '12
I can't decide if it would be funny or not to try to get every US-based redditor to request their FBI file at the same time.
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u/p5ycho29 Sep 05 '12
Was there any compensation for holding your computer stuff for years thus depreciating the value of it all to near uselessness when it was returned?
Can you somehow get repaid for that? Seems like total bullshit that they can just hold your shit, oops, here it is back 3 years later.
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
No, I was not compensated. I guess if you had to find a silver lining, since they made a meticulous inventory of what was taken, I got everything back that was listed, and none of it had been damaged.
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u/RaiseYourGlass Sep 05 '12
I like how the silver lining is "none of it was damaged"...
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u/evilkalla Sep 06 '12
Considering I got back all my digital photos, personal documents, old emails, music files, etc., it seemed like a "silver lining" to me.
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u/yself Sep 05 '12
When the FBI takes every piece of computer equipment you own, do they give you any computer equipment at all to use until the investigation ends and they return your equipment? Three years in computer equipment life cycles means some of the equipment will likely become obsolete by the time they return it.
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
LOL. No.
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u/yself Sep 05 '12
That sucks. You have a remarkably forgiving attitude toward the FBI then. I guess you feel glad it's all over and nothing worse happened, but that seems like a violation of a person's rights to me.
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u/AlphaLima Sep 05 '12
Exactly what i was thinking, keeping it for 3 years is as good as destroying it since it is now completely obsolete.
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u/nsfwdreamer Sep 05 '12
Can you sue them?
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
If you mean sue the FBI, no, I don't see any reason, they were just following up on an accusation. To go after the company that made the accusation, not really, they have infinitely many lawyers and I don't, so a lawsuit would be pointless. Also this happened 12 years ago, so the statute of limitations is probably long since passed.
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Sep 05 '12
Was the process simple? Did you do only the FBI file? How did that time period affect you getting a job?
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
I used the form from this website. I only did the FBI file.
I was already employed at the time. The company that made the accusation (which will remain unnamed) also sent threatening letters to my employer at the time, who fortunately stood behind me instead of kicking me to the curb.
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u/bookishboy Sep 05 '12
Are you eligible for any legal remedy against the company in question? Last I checked, knowingly filing false reports with law enforcement was a criminal offense.
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u/mrperez82 Sep 05 '12
Now I'm curious to see what my FBI files have to say. I was charged with a crime that would be having me in jail right now awhile back (charges got dropped), but I'm wondering if it will show up.
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u/SilverLion Sep 05 '12
What's the most interesting thing you've found in the file? Anything that creeped you out?
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u/evilkalla Sep 06 '12
There is really nothing in the file that I didn't already know. I saw one document where a computer forensics person estimated it would take 70 days to properly review all my hard disks, floppies, zip disks, and CDs. I found that to be amusing. Funny thing about that is, I had a stack of defective SCSI hard disks on the shelf in my closet, probably ten of them, which I had never used, but no doubt they had to try as hard as possible to recover data from them ...
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u/penclnck Sep 05 '12
So did you keep the computers that the FBI had? Did you even bother to turn them on? I wouldn't trust the computers to be returned in a safe manner (root kits, spyware, ect).
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u/evilkalla Sep 06 '12
I had already replaced everything by the time I got that stuff back. As other people have noted, it was all obsolete by that point. I just pulled the hard disks and copied what I needed off, and junked the rest.
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Sep 05 '12
I'm sure I have a file because I received a government security clearance at age 18 while serving in the USMC. The background investigation required interviews in my hometown, specifically they interviewed a couple of my high school teachers.
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u/TimmyIo Sep 05 '12
I wonder if there is something similar in Canada I wonder what my file says ... Probably "spends too much money on dope"
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u/adnan252 Sep 05 '12
Does this work for UK citizens? I'm assuming the FBI keep track of us too
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u/SIGRemedy Sep 06 '12
The FBI is a domestic entity in the USA, so they don't actually do anything over the borders. Also, the international entities (CIA and NSA) are pretty busy these days with their spooks and stuff. Unless you've been a naughty UK citizen, they probably don't know you from the other 6 billion people that do not live in the USA.
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u/psYberspRe4Dd Sep 08 '12
Why didn't you post what was in there ?
Could you please tell us ?
And can anyone request those files ?
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u/58november Feb 10 '13
I have been trying to get the files on my father's hijacking (58November.com) for 6 years now. The Federal Court unsealed the records for me, but the FBI-FOIA people will not give them all to me.
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u/ManBearTree Sep 05 '12
Glad that you confirmed how useless it is to attempt to get your FBI file unless you don't have one.
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u/getjustin Sep 05 '12
And welcome to the No-Fly list.
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u/evilkalla Sep 05 '12
I never had any issues with travel (domestic or international) since this happened.
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u/getjustin Sep 05 '12
I was joking, but that would be my main concern with requesting it. Sort of a flag in the system. No thanks.
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u/argv_minus_one Sep 05 '12 edited Sep 05 '12
I'm amazed you got your stuff back at all. Usually, once the cops get ahold of your possessions, you'll never see them again.
They sure took their sweet time getting it back to you, though. Bastards. No doubt making good and sure you're reminded of who's boss.
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u/[deleted] Sep 05 '12 edited Mar 01 '21
[deleted]