Oh, definitely.
If you have actually been in the Sea Org and been around OSA and OSA staff, it's obvious to you they aren't running around spying on people and looking in their trash.
They may be paying a PI to do it, but they can only get so much money through FP for this. So, the amount of spying and trash picking they can get done is pretty limited.
Part of the solution that seemed to be being used to get some of this stuff done was "public volunteers". But, considering some of the most vocal critics these days used to be "public volunteers" (Tory; Patty P) I think there's a good chance they're not doing this like they used to.
I read the stuff on ARS and OCMB about OSA OSA OSA everywhere and I roll my eyes. While they think OSA is spying through their windows, it's a lot more likely they are all at a mandatory muster at the HGB before everyone has to white glove the building for the whole night.
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This whole post thus far is pretty interesting. In my royal opinion you're all right and wrong. Hi Chuck Beatty, hi Dan Garvin. OSA is by-and-large a paper pushing self-important puppet, containing oh-so-determined hardworking peeps, all breaking their backs for the even more self-important upper management suits. But...there is a definite program on the table that is worked actively. The GO methods may be publicly dead but the direct replacements such as the Snow White Program and others continue. Chuck your ex-wife - a lovely lady - may have been able to separate herself from the yuck mentally on some level but she sat in a cubicle with Ben Shaw/Neil O'R. and Kirsten Thorne and whatever the current incarnation of the Invest Bureau was. There's no way she didn't know the crap that was going on. She certainly didn't physically participate in their active "investigations" (for the most part...but there were days she was out in the field too) but she sat right there on the computer with Jane whats-her-face digging up and analyzing for all of the above. What choice did she have anyway, except to totally dig in her heels and make a meal out of her defiance. That ends up with her digging ditches, eating beans and rice, being harassed, and a generally shit time. And yet she kept her dignity and I liked her a lot. There's no way that the idea that a good dozen to two dozen of the OSA Int staff, themselves, don't directly, take part in the cloak and dagger intrigue. There's Doug, Ben, Kirsten (Kirsten and Ben...now there's a very dirty team), her dad, Angel, Neal, Linda Sarkovich, Hamel and others who loved flapping their wings walking out the office with their faces set just right to show how "on to" the current flappy situation they were. The Ingrams of the world were always around and those "volunteers" who loved playing James Bond. And all around the dirty hands were scores of people who got things ready, turned the latest dirt into a press release, spun this and spun that. Treasury was in on the program...pay the PIs, pay Monique's $500/hr fees, don't pay for dental care for a veteran staff member, etc. HCO was in on the program...watching the dirties, applying the pressure on behalf of "Int". Whats-her-face Heinrich clapped and cheered for the heroes on the front lines - inevitably the guys with their hands dirty - from her Port Captain post. Haha I would warrant that the reason Dan Garvin didn't get harassed too badly is because he was so involved in computerizing Invest CIC and OSA Int's very first early oh-so-scary forays into the mean and nasty world of the internet and the free-thinking world. He probably knows too much and they know he knows how to work a computer and get through their smoke screen and show the world that he isn't making things up. Go Dan!
I can say I've been there, said wtf and got out.
But the idea that the recruits into OSA Int are mostly fresh-faced innocents with good intentions to do good is true. Even the dirties for the most part were "nice". There were some assholes like Lynn Farny (how did he ever marry such a nice lady?) but hey.