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DEA Program "More Troubling" Than NSA
Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters is reporting on a secret effort by the Drug Enforcement Agency to collect data from wiretaps, informants, and other sources. Considered most troubling is a systematic campaign to hide this program from the courts, denying defendants their right to know how evidence against them was obtained. This agenda targets U.S. citizens directly, as it is mainly focused on drug trafficking. From the article: 'Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.'"
A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said. After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."
Country without a consitution says what?
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Has the money made by the prohibition industry exceeded that made by drug king pins yet? This is the kind of unchecked power that the cartels would love to have.
Like we didn't already know this was going on...
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Can we use the word police state yet?
This "recreating the investigative trail" sounds like a fancy way to describe perjury.
RTFA, it says the DEA submits requests for money for the program in budget documents and its a well known program for coordinating inter-state and international investigations
Maybe they're so keen to keep the source hidden because it's the NSA and all of their programs?
Speaking of the NSA, anyone else notice a number of stories over the past few days ( here and elsewhere ) that seem designed to throw attention anywhere but the NSA's crap?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
nothing to see here... only criminals are affected, you are not a criminal, Citizen, are you?
Shift focus from the rampant illegal spying by the NSA on innocent US citizens with the "OMG bigger problem" of drug enforcement agencies illegal spying on actual law breaking citizens.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.
When one branch of government tends towards totalitarianism the rest will follow suit, it isn't that one or the other program is worse then its counterpart, these things are symptoms of a general trend, the trend itself is what should make people worry.
If they'd legalize drugs the bottom would fall out of the market and all the drug-funded gangs and their wars would fade away. (Or look for something else illegal to sell.)
Tax dope as high as you can without creating a black market, and use the revenue for prevention and rehab programs. And use all the money that's currently going to the DEA and prison-industrial complex for something useful.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Recreating the investigative trail sounds a LOT like fabrication.
We have DEA agents who swear to "tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth" knowingly omitting an important part of the truth.
They only target drug users/traffickers right? Serves those junkies right for putting crap into their bodies that isn't legal. If you use drugs you should be be in jail, however possible. The ends justify the means. I will sleep better knowing that all drug users are in jail.
Thanks DEA, I know now that it is better to subvert civil rights to uphold morality in a free society than to have adults freely choose what they put in their body.
Smell that? It isn't reefer. That's American Justice.
[not dealing with the morality or politics of this, but simply as it relates to hiding information that you use]
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has some good examples of how anyone can conceal information they've discovered. When the Allies in WW II wanted to protect the secret that they could decrypt the German's Enigma traffic, they had to take steps beyond simply not using the information (e.g.: not telling anyone that Coventry was going to be bombed). If you want to use information, without letting anyone know for sure that you've got the information, you've got to show other possible means for having that info.
I guess they're getting a little fancier than "spy on them illegally then call in an 'anonymous' tip."
Government: We're not fucking you. We just put the tip in.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Even after this exposure, there will be a solid core of epically stupid citizens that will be fine with this; sheep that mindlessly graze on network TV and football whilst repeating the mantra 'If you've done nothing wrong...'
It's a good thing we have Obama in the white house, because this sort of thing would NEVER happen with a Democrat in power /sarcasm
There is a pissing contest going on between three letter agencies, to see who going to piss most on The Constitutional rights.
(1) plant drugs on enemy (2) use parallel construction to bust him (3) trail back to you is practically erased
And the banks own the capitol. Check-out HSBC deferred prosecution.
Is that Merkins nowadays don't think that all humans are created equal. There's Merkinland and then there's the cesspool of corruption that's the rest of us.
Rather like the Ayatollahs of Iran where they belive too that they are the only place where REAL humans live.
Therefore a spy program that may be targeting more of those Other Nonhumans (i.e. non Merkins) is not as troubling as one that targets mostly them.
I'm sure, all of the quoted gentlemen were Shocked. Shocked to discover "parallel reconstruction" was used here.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
But the NSA actually turned them down.
Copyright infringement HAS BEEN MADE a criminal offence.
This allows the RIAA/MPAA to make demands of ISPs to dig up info on "filesharers" that a civil case does not allow them to make.
Of course, the burden of proof for criminal intent is higher, so they drop the case when notified who the J Doe is and then prosecute that person in a civil case, where they already have the information they were not allowed to get for a civil action, but now the burden of proof is much lower.
So copyright breech IS a criminal offence.
Crim.
Yes, the US is a police state -- and has been for several decades. What I think is more important is to realize the goal of the police state. Most people assume it's "power". FALSE. The goal is money, and power is merely a stepping stone on the path to riches.
The DEA's budget is directly tied to their "performance". They will do everything in their power to increase their rate of busts, in order to justify an even bigger budget next year. What good is a budget to a government employee who is paid by salary? Leverage. The bigger the cash flow, the more leverage they have to exploit that cash flow (indirectly of course) for personal gain.
What people don't seem to understand is that police lie. ALL. THE. TIME. They lie selfishly, indiscriminately and callously. They lie overly and omittingly. They lie to suspects, witnesses, passers-by, judges, and juries. They lie in public and under oath. They lie to deceive, coerce and intimidate.
And they get away with it. ALL. THE. TIME.
Go watch the ubiquitous Don't Talk to the Police video. I know you've already watched it. Watch it again. Especially the part where the police officer explicitly states that he and all police officers are "professional liars."
I admit, IANAL, but doesn't this give grounds for any convicted drug felon to try for a retroactive mistrial?
As the parent writes, we have many government employees who regularly perjure themselves. This ranges from cops and FBI agents all the way to agency heads testifying in front of Congress.
Of course, we will never see a government employee prosecuted for perjury. The common citizen, on the other hand, is presumed to be lying if their testimony contradicts what the government says - and will be prosecuted accordingly. The classic are the FBI interviews, where the only allowed record are the FBI agent's notes. What you actually said is irrelevant: it's what's in the notes that counts, and no you may not make any other record of the conversation.
You can no longer trust the US government. Real unemployment at 23% and rising. Hopelessly corrupt two-party system. Hopelessly corrupt Congress. No realistic hope for change. Sorry, it's time to bail: there are other countries with better governments - take your pick based on your ideology. I left and handed in my passport, and I expect many, many more will do the same in the coming years.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
you must rise up.
then it's up to the jury to rule the constitutional way
ought to be severed.
Have taught America well all of these thing were why I joined the Army to fight Communism.
Now were every bit as bad.
All the bodies from the cold war are rolling.Understand the only difference to the soldier were did not leave the bodies on the field of battle.
The jury has no idea that anything unconstitutional has happened. Not even the defendent, prosecutor, nor the judge are told that law enforcement was given a tip by the SOD. It's a complete coverup.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
Your husband is arrested, but at the trial it is revealed that there were cameras in your house which reveals that not only were you cheating on your husband multiple times with multiple men, but one of those other men also beat you up, and that your husband is innocent.
It's perfectly legal to put cameras in your own home. They have, for example, been used to catch nannies who were abusing the children, and the courts have ruled that those cameras are perfectly legal and admissible evidence.
What if there were cameras pointed at Zimmerman when he attacked and murdered Trayvon in cold blood.
Then that could have been used as evidence. I'm not even opposed to things like cameras in convenience stores, whose video can be used to find and prosecute criminals. All I object to is large networks of cameras, which can be used (especially with emerging software technologies) to track anybody and everybody. Having a non-networked camera in the local 7-11 is fine. If a crime is committed then yank the video and use it.
I have proof of the gov't trying to get me charged with extortion. Now I have proof from the headers to show my case.
Quit believing them, because you're gonna get fucked by them. You need to fight them back and my own case is a matter of supposed 'national security'
Thankfully I don't follow half of their unconstitutional instructions.
You trust the gov't, you're next in line to fall.
Get your logic circuits set right, slashdotters.
Want to see my proof? I'll hand it out, even thought the gov't says not to because it endangers national security.
So do you want it? It's embarassingly simple shit to - just a forged email header.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."... Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.
This seems an illegal way to conceal that evidence is fruit of the poisonous tree - evidence derived from illegally obtained information. At the very least, it improperly blocks the defense from making a case that the evidence was illegally obtained. To make matters worse, "It's decades old, a bedrock concept", and the occurrence of this illegality has been concealed in all cases. As such, by these actions, it is now only reasonable to doubt the legality of every prosecution that has occurred in the US starting since whenever this decades old practice began. The charge here is that US police are routinely messing with the evidence as a matter of course. There are only bad outcomes here if this article is accurate. The least bad one is that there will be millions of mistrials.
Lets look at law enforcement from a money-making standpoint. In order for law enforcement to make money, there has to be work to be done. Officers, prosecutors, investigators, DNA lab workers, prison guards, judges, the people doing the wiretapping, new-prison construction workers, and everyone involved makes pay from the part they make in the system. Without "bad guys" to bust, there is no need for what they do, and that leads to nobody making a paycheck. These are people who have families of their own who need to be clothed and fed and taken care of, all of which requires money. So if it comes down to respecting an individual's rights versus maintaining own their ability to continue to put food on the table, they're gonna do everything they can get away with doing and more. Whatever it takes to make sure that paycheck keeps coming in. So to create artificial demand, everybody is now a major criminal. Everybody is a major threat to the nation, everybody gets wiretaps, everybody is major league, and everybody gets maximum sentencing. All criminals, great and small, are biw effectively the "fuel" that is consumed so that their services remain in demand. And the popular attitude among law enforcement is that these people deserve to have their lives ruined anyhow, so its no big deal really; they're boosting their paychecks and bettering society both at the same time. High fives all around.
The U.S. government is EXTREMELY CORRUPT. This is no time for joking.
In some ways the U.S. government is the most violent that has ever existed. The U.S. government has invaded more countries than any other country in the history of the world. The U.S. government has more than 760 military bases worldwide. Taxpayers pay, but aren't allowed to know where there money goes.
Read the story about the US government's purchases of over one billion rounds of anti-personnel ammunition. Quote: "The ammunition is to be use domestically, not by the military."
Do you think it won't get worse?
Maybe next President.
What I find most troubling from the article is this:
"You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.
(Bold emphasis mine.) The casual way that a law enforcement agent advocated violating laws relating to probable cause is astonishing. Subconciously I know that they do this but to actually come out in print and admit it is really sad.
Don Dugger
"Censeo Toto nos in Kansa esse decisse." - D. Gale
Your average jury member is shockingly ignorant of the law or constitution, anyone who does evidence knowledge is drummed out of the jury pool, the possibility of jury nullification is kept strictly out of permitted court conversation, and some prosecutors have tried to bring intimidatory criminal cases against people who even tried speaking on the issue in the street to passerby.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Good.
Maybe now you'll be as upset as we foreigners are about the NSA surveilling us.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Or they planted drugs on the victim and got the DEA to be a conspirator in 'perverting the course of justice' scheme.
I see they're targetting critics of the NSA (just had a call on a number that doesn't link to me except in one UK official document from someone asking phishing questions), he could be totally innocent of anything but pissing off politicians.
The jury thinks the police arrested someone at random, so any possibility of setup is impossible. A bad actor could plant the drugs but could not arrange for the police random stop to catch the person. Thus this eliminates that branch of thinking.
It's not just 'fruits of the poison tree' here, its 'conspiracy to pervert the course of justice', 'falsification of evidence'. It means the jury cannot weigh up the possibility of drugs planted on the victim.
This is a crime, its a real crime they've been party to.
I wonder how many people they've planted drugs on and arranged one of these fake random stops to find the evidence they just planted.
Police and private citizens have different rules. So if the police break in your house, without a warrant, and find evidence of a crime, well sorry that evidence, and anything resulting from it, can't be used. They didn't follow the law. Likewise if the police pay (or force, or ask, or whatever) someone to break in to your house and that person finds evidence of a crime, it again can't be used. While the person wasn't a cop, he acted as their agent.
However, if someone breaks in to their house all on their own and finds evidence of a crime and turns it over to the police, that they can use. The person still broke the law and can and should go to jail for breaking in to your house, but because they were acting of their own accord, it doesn't taint the evidence for use in a case against you.
Exposing this sort of behavior to the general public will help immensely in trials: Jurors will be less likely to take law enforcement officials' word seriously when given as evidence. Now, they'll be just as big a bunch of lying sacks of shit as the drug dealers they are trying to bust.
Have gnu, will travel.
When it is discovered that Obama DoJ is fabricating "evidence" Holder will be TOAST and Obama will be facing Impeachment and a lengthy trial on felony charges that will last for years to come.
Go Obama Go,
Round the Bowl Down the Hole,
Go Obama Go.
Ironclad rule: Jury decides the facts of the case, judge decides the law of the case.
Anything that disturbs that is strictly forbidden.
This is by design. Even if you're of the opinion that it's broken. It's broken by design.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
The FBI has engaged in these kinds of practices for a long time, which is probably why it sounds so casually acknowledged by various agency people. The mindset is that there are: (1) the things you do to identify and thereby catch criminals (the law enforcer's primary duty), and (2) the stuff you collect to "build a case" for court (reasonably known but tedious rules must be observed for court-worthy evidence). The more urgency there is attached to a case, the more likely law enforcement will employ unconstitutional practices to get the job done ASAP. There is likely a gradient between Federal and local law enforcement, with local law enforcement having to more strictly follow the rules.
Frankly, it is shocking that the judge and criminal defenders are unaware of this. Perhaps the defenders do not handle many federal cases? Maybe NSA-level spy tactics were never expected to be seen in drug offense cases? These practices certainly don't come up in every case (although it now sounds like it could be more common than thought).
There are a number of commonly employed schemes for whitewashing unconstitutionally acquired evidence. Generally, the name of the game is to not have it go to court, where evidence is weighed and potentially thrown out:
#1) Plea bargaining. The jewel of the system. Trump up the charges, point to outrageous federal sentencing guidelines and uncertainty of trial, and suddenly it looks like you will be spending your remaining productive years in prison. You better take a plea before more charges get heaped on.
#2) Turn to other charges. Find a crime where the problem evidence doesn't come into play. That's right - 99 years for mail/wire fraud.
#3) Turn informant. Coerce/intimidate the guy into helping catch more bad guys. Do not prosecute. Bonus points for also getting jail time via a plea bargain.
#4) Do not disclose. The more slapdash things (also known as "unconstitutional") where the formalities (known as "constitutional requirements") were not followed can't be used in court, so they're not relevant, right? Just focus on the sound evidence.
#5) Puffery & intimidation. The cops do not have to tell the truth in interrogations. The bad guy's life is now hell in his eyes, and will cooperate to get out.
#6) Drop the case. Fine, you caught us (happens sometimes) - now go away!
#7) Compartmentalize. Take people doing sketchy stuff, and put them into a special group that pretty much keeps to themselves. Bonus points for having this done by another agency that operates under a different set of rules (like the NSA's foreign surveillance function). Now something that might have been tossed out of court might slip in
#8) Change the laws. Under FISA, if the program finds evidence of a crime, it can be used. Under the last FISA amendment, the program no longer needs to have foreign surveillance as its "primary purpose," just one of the purposes. Anyone notice that in the recently disclosed papers the NSA is receiving requests from the FBI? There is a reasonable chance they are the middleman for other agencies.
Other aspects of the mentality:
1) It's only unconstitutional when a court says it is. Who knows what the judge will say? (this cuts both for and against both sides)
2) Unconstitutional practices work 99% of the time. The ones that slip through just end up on the naughty list, and will get caught again.
3) They are all bad guys. They only don't go to prison when they escape on a technicality.
4) At least we stopped them that one time.
Also, should it all hit the fan, structure everything to eliminate responsibility. This is a natural function of bureaucracy. In the old days, you would lay the paperwork to show the guy above you was in charge, and you were just doing as told (think Truman's "the buck stops here"). Today, things are more sophisticated, and can be arranged so no one bears responsibility. The number one tactic is setting up procedures; if something is outed as unconstitutional, it was an aberra
The fact that ANY of these "letter agencies" are doing it in the first place is more than "troubling".
After that, it's just a matter of death by degrees.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Lets all thank the Prince of Modern Libertarianism, Ronnie Raygun and his never ending war on the common smuck.
And I also want to give all you Libs a nod for believing the delusion that lowering the taxes on the 1%, will trickle down to you and you will be able to join them in the country clubs and Ferrari rallies.
Every single "modded up" post supports the drug dealers, with the implication they should be let go because of a miscarriage of justice.
I'm curious - is that what the mods are all saying? I've read the reasons 50 times over, I just want to know if everyone wants all of these cases thrown out. If we found 50,000 mishandled cases with drug dealers (some of them murderers, etc), should they be let out simultaneously? one highly modded comment said words to the effect "DEA are not doing this for the good of the general public."
If these drug dealers were let out, would you be willing to accept the consequences of any deaths or social harm that resulted from their release?
Skipping over the ridiculousness of victimless drug related crime.
It should be clear to some that there are so many more 'political prisoners' in our jails then any others.
It's time to release all non-violent offenders, and start a large scale removal of judges, prosecutors, etc. Once a decent legal system overhaul is in place, retrials will be required for violent offenders at the least, most likely a good percentage may be released on review of details and interviews.
Time to start thinking of what we are going to do with all these new people back into society.. Parallel this with solar installation and related training, complete with a serious rebuilding our manufacturing cities with a focus on businesses related to improving the state of human existence and justice.
Do I have a witness!
For some reason, I feel good about parallel construction as long as it is completely fact based and:
1. At least two independent sources make the process more objective from the perspective of the law enforcement.
2. The actual legal case is fully based on the the evidence gathered during the parallel constructing phase.
Such things are prime candidates for legislation on law enforcement actions in general.
I feel like the unease related to this is founded on the "non-investigative" legal system you have (but some of us non-USians don't).
It's interesting that the constitution has become a puzzle piece that the judicial branch try's to find the most logical argument around the literal meaning of what was intended ignoring the intent of what the constitution says. If this is not stopped I think there will be a time when what the literal meaning of the constitution will become irrelevant with the judicial branch able to give an argument justifying any and all actions.
My house has been "secretly" searched twice on simple suspicion, based on assumption, based on my appearing to be "weird". "If you don't want to be suspected, don't be weird." was what I was told would be the solution. Not being weird means fitting into a category: "Dress like what you are, talk to your neigbors, thell them what you do, keep regular hours, avoid places and people who might do drugs and might be supplying, or buying from, you. Stay away from the homeless and 'characters'..." In other words, don't give the predator-authorities reason to suspect you might be 'good' for a bust. And, I might add from personal experience, don't expect them to be happy when they find out you are, as they say, "wasting our time." It's their country, after all. The rest of us, we all jus' niggers here, whatever our colors (skin or otherwise), ethnicities, origins, etc. It's the new equal opportunity to know Jim Crow.
The US government hasn't had proper statistics or data collection forever. We the people haven't done our jobs as we've allows self-serving politicians distort the data and stats we use to judge them. Canada based their unemployment using taxes - the best source possible. We've never done it correctly and continually tweaked it to raise the stats.
You can't get real unemployment numbers without IRS data. Even then the number is overly simplistic. Underemployment hardly gets mentioned - if we need a single number it should combine both... But then underemployment isn't fairly calculated either; along with minimum wage and many other things.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Guys, if you're not dealing drugs, you have nothing to worry about.
If you read the article, they're pressing the NSA to let them rifle through the NSA database and avail themselves of NSA technical resources. They're using reasoning like "this drug money could be supporting terrorists ! " Well, just anything could be supporting terrorists; terrorists get their cash from legit enterprises (bin Laden) and unwitting customers to other legal enterprises (Hawala etc. ) .
The problem is, the wider the access to that kind of deeply personal information, the greater the likelihood it will be abused.
Take for example the jaw-dropping abuse present within the asset forfeiture programme- reader alert- if you're inclined to high blood pressure when totally and finally morally outraged , you actually may not want to follow this link:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_stillman
Americans WILL turn on the love affair they have with law enforcement if law enforcement oversteps its bounds. If I were a seasoned DEA vet heading a department, I'd run like hell away from my agents being able to access NSA style information about common Americans. My reasoning would be, given the potential applications of this information and my lack of real detailed control over the individual actions by each member of army of people under my charge, it's going to blow up in my our face and the backlash will be crippling.
Have we not learned that even heavily vetted people can't be trusted ? Think of the applications readily available information about your searches could yield.
Realistic example: Harkening back to the article I linked to, what if citizens' became so angry, some of them formed a nascent movement to repeal civil forfeiture laws. From the POV of some law enforcement, that is literally am mortal threat to their existence. People who mortally threaten my police department with financial extinction , whether they mean to be or not, are a threat to public safety. Therefore, I am interested to know exactly who those citizens are. I will then instruct my officers to pretext them (think up a false excuse to pull them over) when they're driving and take things from there.Perhaps they'll make it easy on us and prove to have an attitude. Perhaps their internet activity can be construed to be suspicious. Perhaps I know their employer...
Someone (can't remember who) has pointed out that anonymity begets respect between people who are otherwise strangers because you instinctively aren't sure what sort of resources or connections the stranger has available to them. If that is removed because of unilateral, intimate and omniscient knowledge, then all respect and constraint is lost and people are effectively deprived of their humanity. They become objects instead of equals, observed, known, measured, their foibles exposed for the observers amusement, ridicule and ultimately unbridled contempt. See- NSA analysts passing around audio recordings of overseas military personnel having phone sex with their spouses:
http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/trevor-paglen-turnkey-tyranny-surveillance-and-the-terror-state/
This is where this goes. This is a psychological fact about humans. This kind of invasion, like the abuse of civil forfeiture laws, has the power, that is it carries sufficient emotional charge, to tear this nation apart. The government can't kid themselves that this is just a technical issue looking for a technical solution, or that the most abusive and corrosive applications of this kind of power won't materialize and be fully realized.
No WMD is soon going threaten Western civilization unless it also unleashes a real widespread loss of faith government and government's motivations. Unleashing NSA -style surveillance on the average citizen is the fast track, the force multiplier to any WMD attack that al Queda wants.
One day, it may c
When the cops were questioning Zimmerman after the incident they told him that they had found surveilance footage. (a lie of course) His response was "thank God"; not exactly what you'd expect a murderer to say.
Where are you going to send them after you capture them? Guantanamo Bay? Are you going to give them a trial? In a U.S. federal courtroom, or in a military kangaroo courtroom? You'll give them a huge platform to drum up support for their cause either way.
I disagree with a lot of what Obama has done, but capturing militants does more harm than just killing them, if you're not prepared to do it in total secrecy and hide them away somewhere, interrogate them and then dispose of them when they are no longer useful. And even then it would probably leak and there would be massive blowback from it.
The current strategy is creating a big terrorism problem for the future. Not coincidentally we have an entire anti-terrorism industry whose existence is mostly justified by post-9/11 Fears! and in the future they'll need better justifications to keep throwing so much money at it. Look at the War on Some Drugs and how long that has been going on and how much resources are spent on that. Its basically a giant jobs program, for law enforcement and a way to keep money flowing to certain criminal kingpins. The anti-terrorism stuff is not THAT different. Every empire needs to have external enemies it can use as an excuse for things. 9/11 was a godsend for the empire-builders and those who make their money from the military/security complex.
The Constitution of the United States of America, enacted in 1787, is a contract specifying the relationship of the 'Elected Representatives' of the Federal Government and the voting populas and their delegates in national elections, i.e. Electoral Collage.
The Constitution of the United States of America has NO relationship with the 'Un-Elected' employees nor presidential appointees of the President. They have Carte Blanche and impunity of any Law, Constitutional, State, Local and even moral.
This is the Secret Interpretation that bestows power to the NSA and other Non-Elected Agencies of the U.S.A. Federal Government.
No, not by original design. "It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision... you [jury members] have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy." -- John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_v._Brailsford_%281794%29
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Arresting them, forcing them to sign over their assets to be released. Cavity searching women on the streets in front of everyone.
The spying. The seizures. The threats of a 1000 yrs in prison if you dont plead guilty.
The mere idea that drugs are a problem is ludicrous compared to our society dissolving in front of us.
The groundwork was laid over decades and decades. I mean, the very people who are being victimized by the rule of the rich are manipulated (rather easily, I might add) to support the them. The chances of overturning this klepto/corp/pluto cracy are slim to non, the nation is a vehicle for the rich and powerful to run roughshod over the mostly ignorant populace.
Oh noooooooooooooo... My weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeed.... what ever will I do?
Hmmmm...
Move to a medical weed card state? Oh god too much effort... Must complain about government entities doing their job within the scope that laws were written to enable them to do so in the first place...
Oh wait... Its not the government entities we have to worry about, its the law makers we elect. Lets follow this path a little deeper... ....
Maybe its the american citizens that need to worry about other american citizens that vote for stupid people that write stupid laws?
Nawh, too simple... Lets go back to complaining about a weed shortage!
Technically, the words 'fair trial' do not appear in the constitution at all, ever. It's as much of a misquote as ' separation of church and state'. Granted, I wish we had the right, but constitutionally, we're not promised it by any means.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/how-police-all-over-the-us-steal-cash-cars-even-homes-from-the-innocent.html
Read down to about the middle of the article. Texas confiscatory laws mean that even if you weren't charged with a crime, the authorities can confiscate your property and use it to pay their own salary and bonuses.
When I was a kid, we used to refer to such people as "The Mafia." Now, drug laws have evolved to the point where we refer to those people as "The Police." Mexico has nothing on Texas when it comes to policing as an entrepreneurial activity.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
The final season of the TV show "The Wire" did this exact thing. An illegal wire tap was used, and they spent time trying to find a way to make it appear that they had legitimately obtained the same intelligence that they got illegally.
This story is news the same as "Politician Lies!" A generation ago, a judge and former prosecutor under Henry Wade in Dallas told us "Oh, that's just 'probable-cause perjury.'" A lawyer and a law professor told us, half facetiously, during bar prep in 1964, under the "liberal" Warren Supreme Court, "Don't worry about the Fourth Amendment being on the exam; the courts have repealed it." Most people don't realize that the "Patriot Act" mostly codifies stuff the Supreme Court had already let the authorities get away with. "It's 'reasonable," therefore Constitutional, because it might help fight that phony "war." Why should they not have to get a warrant to go through and reconstruct the privileged and confidential documents from my law office trash, etc.? Nobody could rationally believe they had gone through it without already knowing what they were looking for from another source.
I got caught, and knew I had been caught, in a very stupid Cosmic Top Secret CIA dragnet "mail cover" because they sent me an IBM card, allegedly from the Post Office, asking if I had "check one, sign and return, ordered, purchased, solicited . . .88-21 USSR," while researching a point in international economics, and they failed to check my explanation, easily done, and remove me from their list of suspected Soviet sympathizers and spies, and lied to my U. S. Senators and me about this, through several administrations of both parties from 1959 until 1983. They never would tell me who they had told they thought I was a Communist sympathizer or spy, or later whether or not they had helped John Connally run scams or launder dirty money for politicians, either, because, they said, that might reveal how they operate.
I'm a retired lawyer with criminal law experience up through murder trials and appeals, with lots of experience in medical and other privacy law, and a victim of various crimes, and have known the frustration of trying to get the authorities to do their job against "crack houses" and influential and other incestuous and other child molesters. You don't have to go beyond the DEA Web site to learn that the so-called "war on drugs," or whatever Obama is calling that sham and scam now, has been and is being lost.
There was a wide-open "crack house" on this block across the street from a state university and within an enhanced-penalty zone. Police in a marked car with its lights flashing, and I, heard and watched a drug transaction "Hey, man, I need two rocks . . .," the dealers had threatened my wife and dog and run off some of our good home-owner neighbors at a loss, and, after going all the way from there to Governor Rick Perry's office to the White House Drug Czar, I finally got Building Inspection to close it down after 19 months. I have seen police reports that said clients had been stopped and frisked because they were "in a high crime and drug dealing area, to wit the 1700 block of Wesley Street," which happens to be the location of the police station, too. They wouldn't even open a file on two burglaries and the destruction of my law office by what the fire marshal told the city attorney and me had clearly been arson, which anyone could see anyway, but wouldn't put that in his official report, too, but that was all apparently because of which clients I discovered had been incestuously molested.
Who, if anyone, was actually surprised when Snowden leaked the truth about the NSA spying on Americans at home? I've seen news stories and pictures about such dragnet interception of calls for years in publications from the New York Times to the Deseret News. Of course you could flag a suspected drug dealer in Dallas' number as well as a producer or terrorist in Pakistan's. What worries me is that I deal with a lot of information about, for example, child sexual abuse, professionally and politically, and, given that our government has proven to me that it can't, and refuses to, distinguish between a Communist spy and a college student researching the Argentine-Russian balances of trade and payments, I can only imagine what Google or the government thinks I am up to as a retired lawyer interested in child abuse issues, and who they may have told what.