Another huge gaping hole is Congress’ failure to enact law that can feasibly be equally applied. The law may be very specific, but can it realistically be equally and fairly applied. Equal protection sounds nice, it should naturally limit discretion, and it is a great goal, but the application of it must be realistically feasible. If laws cannot be realistically equally applied, then the corrupt individuals can just say, “Well, we’re doing our best. We got a few, but not all,” when the reality is that those few they prosecuted were specifically targeted. They’ve got an easy out.

You have to take away the leeway to abuse. Take away the excuses. Take away plausible deniability. Remove the room for it, and so on, as much as possible. There are many things congress could do to address the problem. But it’s important to remember that even if we did abolish the FBI, the huge gaping holes for abuse that currently exist in the law could and would still be utilized.

When laws are unspecific, with much of their enforcement left to law enforcement’s discretion, as if they have the ability to read minds, those laws are guaranteed to be abused. The espionage act is a perfect example. The individual must have “reason to believe,” which is purely subjective. The sad truth of the matter is that assumed intent is basically written into the law. Congress basically handed the DOJ and FBI a license to abuse. And you can’t hold them accountable for it. All they have to say is that they genuinely believed the individual had ill intent. You can’t prove they didn’t genuinely believe there was ill intent, any more than they can prove the ill intent. At that point it’s little more than a contest to see which mind reader will the judge believe. Congress could fix a lot of the problem by not creating massive, generic, obfuscated laws that delegate their responsibility to the discretion of other agencies, unnecessarily leaving large openings for the prospect of abuse. That’s a significant part of the problem.