FTL was a rival criminal organization of SD-6, lead by Quan Li. It had cells across the globe, similar to the Alliance of Twelve. They were interested in recovering Milo Rambaldi's artifacts.
FTL had a cover station in the Cultural Affairs Building in Taipei. They recovered Oskar Mueller's notebooks and built the Mueller Device in a lab beneath the cover station. Antonio Quintero was a mole within FTL, but he was discovered and killed by them. Sydney Bristow infiltrated the cover station, was caught and tortured by Zhang Lee, but escaped and extracted the Mueller Device, blowing up the lab in the process. (Truth Be Told)
Later, FTL vacated their bases at Rabat, Chaniers and Kenilworth. SD-6 found encrypted birthday cards at the abandoned locations. SD-6 then stormed the Barrage, an FTL ship passing through the Panama Canal, and found that FTL had changed their encryption devices. Bristow then infiltrated the gallery of John Smythe, an FTL operative in London, to recover one of the encryption devices. However, the device required the DNA of whoever the ciphertext was sent to; Gareth Parkashoff, the Rabat cell leader who received one of the encrypted cards, had been killed by Martin Shepard, an assassin. (Reckoning)
Bristow then went to an asylum in Bucharest to find out from Shepard where he had buried Parkashoff. After SD-6 recovered Parkashoff's DNA, they decrypted the communications and learned that FTL had discovered one of Rambaldi's artifacts in Tunisia. FTL had extracted the Rambaldi clock and sent it to Oxford for analysis. However, Bristow infiltrated the Oxford lab and stole the clock. (Color-Blind)
Marshall Flinkman commented that FTL "was an enemy for, like, ever...," and FTL was effectively disposed of in early 2002 with the assassination of its leader. (The Coup)
Quan Li, lead of FTL
Zhang Lee, head of security in Taipei
Gareth Parkashoff, leader of the FTL cell in Rabat, Iran
John Smythe, FTL operative in London