This woman needs a well-publicised GoFundMe campaign.
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It’s not that judges place to decide what is and is not in the public benefit. The issue in front of him, is whether the government is violating the spirit of the law, in obstructing her requests.
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Beat me to it. Agreed 100%. The costs only exist because the information wasn’t made available in the first place.
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I bet taking it away from Homeland Security (where it was moved post 9/11) would be a good start.
Homeland Security seems to have a flair for theatrics over metrics.
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one degree, out of 360, is ‘some degree’.
Pardon me if I believe that human risk assessment, personnel management, and HR foresight are supposed to be the Secret Services strongest suits. And have been documented here as, not so much.
Do you really know better for her?
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You’ll never guess how this Texas mom discovers embarrassing secrets online for just $100000.
…actually, $30 per page for evidence of official misdoings isn’t bad. The Leveson inquiry cost £5 million for 2000 pages, or about $3000 a page. This must be a rare case of a Texas lawyer being 100x cheaper than a London-based one.
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Cool. You give your credit card to the unprofessional Secret Service agents to buy hookers and whatever else they bought with my tax dollars.
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I’m not American, so maybe this is a cultural thing, but here goes:
Amsterdam’s red light district has legalised prostitution. Ergo, if you purchase a red-light sex worker’s services, you haven’t actually broken the law. There were a few other items on the list like this that, while they may be against the code of conduct, were not actually illegal. Were the agents spending time with sex workers at the expense of completing their job tasks? If so, that is something they should be disciplined for.
There’s been a lot if discussion on this board about “spending tax dollars”. Were the agents expensing the sex worker’s fees? If so, we’re back to the code of conduct and expense policies. If not, you’re telling a government worker how to spend their own money when they have off time during a business trip.
The worst part, to me, is that this Texas lawyer/mom conflated these legal, if in violation of the voice of conduct, activities with the ones which were clearly sexual harassment. That takes the list out of the area of misappropriation of funds/misconduct while on the job (okay, I can see why that needs to be criticised) to a morality squad vendetta (not okay).
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The stability of their family units is relevant, as a compromised agent is a compromised agent. Mixed loyalties lead to mixed results, and that is off-mandate. This is the Secret Service, not a James Bond novel. They’re supposed to be bland, invisibly effective, and not the story. People can be complicated, but uncomplicated people need to be selected for those jobs.
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The secret service and the SIS have entirely different mandates, scopes of operation, and reasons for being. The Secret Service protected stagecoaches originally and evolved to protect dignitaries and politicians. The US Secret Service and Her Majesties Secret Service are not really comparable.
The US NSA and CIA, the overseas intelligence/operative wings, are in entirely different parts of the government, and answer to different cabinet secretaries than the SS. I’m sure they interact, but they have different bosses to answer to.
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There are a handful of US states where adultery is a felony. Several more where it is a punishable misdemeanor.
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So even if you commit adultery half a world away, and only half a world away, you can be charged because your home address is in one of these states? Can you be charged if you use marijuana somewhere it is legal, then return home to where it is illegal, even if you didn’t bring any home with you?
I admit it does feel weird making this point, because I was once married to a serial cheater, but while I think it’s unethical and immoral (not to mention incredibly hurtful), I don’t see what it immediately has to do with business trip protocol.
yes. although I can’t imagine how ‘and only half a world away’ came into this. If adultery is a felony in, and IANAL, the state where you got married, then yes, it is a felony no matter where you do so, and whether on personal, private, or public business.
What lengths would your cheating ex have gone to in order to have kept that info from you? Or someone else, how far would they go?
Choking subordinates, trading job perks for sexual favors and sexual harassment are crimes in the US.
As far as breaking agency regulations, that can lead to blackmail, particularly when a bribe is offered to cover it up (as in the case of the K-9 unit trashing hotel rooms) which is a matter of national security.
Finally, these are government agents integral to the continued functioning of said government. They are not employees in a private firm. American citizens can and do have a legitimate interest in whether they follow the regulations and security measures they are required to in order to obtain and renew their security clearances. If they violate those regulations, they can be stripped of their clearances and potentially face prosecution if they endangered their missions. I knew a CIA field officer who spent two years in court for misconduct in Afghanistan. I knew of a Navy Intelligence officer who lost his job and was fined for bouncing a series of bad checks to pay gambling debts.
I personally do not care if they committed adultery, and I consider it wrong that it’s a crime a few states. I do not even care if they hire sex workers. But I do care if they break agency regulations while on mission and traveling on US taxpayer money. I do care if they bribe civilians not to report misconduct. I do care if they choke their subordinates. I do care if they solicit sexual favors in return for special treatment. I do care if they sexually harass their coworkers. I do care if they force them to drink on duty. Many of the documented incidents are illegal even in civilian workplaces, and that’s before considering their role as government servants and the potential for blackmail.
So no, this is not okay, and the public has a right and legitimate need to know about it. Exposing government corruption is not a moral vendetta. She may be the world’s nicest person or it’s biggest asshole (she creeps me out a little bit in the video). But her personality is immaterial to the ethicallity of her FOIA requests.
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Hm. Isn’t there some standard of law about where the crime is committed? With all the state’s laws in the US, I thought that would be a thing. Interesting.
As for the other: In my case? Not much, because a) it’s not illegal here and b) he was also a consummate gaslighter. Any evidence I did find was used as proof I was delusional – until he left me for one of the women.
Well yeah, that’s my point – the choking and harassment is getting tossed in with other things. It feels like there ought to be another layer of analysis.
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IIRC it’s a serious breach of contract and the marriage contract resides in the issuing state no matter where the parties move to. IANAL.
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Not really secret service material then.
Perhaps so. I doubt a morning news show segment is going to have the time for detailed analyses.
I know you were asking about interstate jurisdiction. But this also gets at another point that US forces are often still under US legal jurisdiction when outside the country. The US Secret Service is under the Department of Homeland Security. I don’t know for certain, but I would not be surprised if they have regulation similar to the Department of Defense’s policy against soliciting prostitution even in countries where it is legal. DoD personnel who violate that regulation can face up to seven years in jail if they are caught and reported. If the DHS has a similar policy, the Secret Service agents who hired prostitutes may still have broken US law under a legal principle known as extraterritorial jurisdiction.
ETA: I do think the story was a little sensationalized. I’ve never known any Secret Service agents, but I’ve known and know quite a few people in the US intelligence community from the days selling data analysis software when they were one of my biggest customers. The vast majority of them were careful about following regulations. The USSS may be different, but I’m betting it’s more a wide spread problem than a massive culture of corruption. But it’s still makes for a legitimate problem and a public issue.
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I still remember the way my brain spasmed when I found out the Secret Service has a uniformed division.
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