A worshiper at a California mosque called frequently for violent jihad against the West. This freaked out his fellow attendees so much that they took out a restraining order on him... and learned he was an informant planted by the FBI.
posted by Faint of Butt on Dec 5, 2010 - 73 comments

Secret Warrants Granted Without Probable Cause
posted by rxrfrx on Nov 22, 2007 - 79 comments

FBI Probes Pentagon Spy Case - Interesting how bad news about the Bush Administration seems to always come out on Fridays - "the FBI has a full-fledged espionage investigation under way and is about to -- in FBI terminology -- "roll up" someone agents believe has been spying not for an enemy, but for Israel from within the office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon."
posted by jackspace on Aug 27, 2004 - 37 comments

Despite the FBI's best efforts, the spy only passed public domain information to North Korea In Graham Greene's hilarious "Our Man in Havana", a salesman-unlikely-turned-spy passes vacuum-cleaner blueprints as plans of a nuclear plant to his superiors at MI6. Turns an American of Korean origin has been doing pretty much the same with North Korea and thus cannot be charged with espionage. One can only hope that the current bullish attitude of North Korea is all based on the info passed by this guy (who, BTW, sold it for cash).
posted by magullo on Feb 6, 2003 - 8 comments

Government Will Ease Limits on Domestic Spying by F.B.I. (NY Times link) As part of a sweeping effort to transform the F.B.I. into a domestic terrorism prevention agency, Attorney General John Ashcroft has decided to relax restrictions on the bureau's ability to conduct domestic spying in counterterrorism operations, senior government officials said today. Here's the Wash. Post's take on the story.
posted by Ty Webb on May 30, 2002 - 21 comments

FBI software cracks encryption wall The FBI is developing software capable of inserting a computer virus onto a suspect’s machine and obtaining encryption keys...
posted by Brilliantcrank on Nov 20, 2001 - 7 comments