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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.'"
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.
Can we use the word police state yet?
This "recreating the investigative trail" sounds like a fancy way to describe perjury.
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"
I suspected (or knew) most of what Snodden leaked. I did not knew the DEA was lying at trials and withholding evidence from pretrial discovery. That's different from taps, which everyone knows they can do with a warrant.
nothing to see here... only criminals are affected, you are not a criminal, Citizen, are you?
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.
Even more troubling: '"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.'
So it's been accepted practice for decades, with or without the NSA, and yet only drug defense lawyers have ever heard of it. A lot of questions reporters could ask: can defense attorneys get the whole meta-data drop for the phone numbers involved? Can civil case parties get any of this stuff?
The defense data dump would seem to be especially on point, since it would allow the defendant to point fingers in other directions.
Choice parts at the end of the article: 'If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement... Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent.... "It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."' That last comment is the absolutely most corrupt.
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
Sounds like a way of having to get one of those bothersome warrants.
Even better, if the original collection mechanism was illegal, you can avoid having the evidence excluded as 'fruit of the poisonous tree' by producing a "parallel construction", that isn't illegal, for how you came to possess it! Such convenience.
Without drug users, who will fill the private prisons? How will the warden feed his kids without your tax dollars? Won't you please, please think of the warden's children?
Without the drug profits fueling the hyper-violent narco state to our south, from what blood-drenched hellhole will our tomato pickers and day laborers flee? And citizens can't do those jobs, because they would want "wages" and "better working conditions," and you can't deport them near so easily when they get uppity.
Oh well. Gotta keep spending those tax dollars though. After all, the children and everything...
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
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.
Right, so: Don't Talk to the Police and Don't Waive Your Right to Trial.
"The wisest thing is for any defense attorney to do is to ask direct questions as to why this particular car was stopped on this particular day"
"The driver $misc_innocuous_driving_offense, so I stopped him. When I approached the car, I thought I smelled marijuana, so I called a drug sniffing dog, which indicated there were drugs in the car"
This line of "construction" is accepted 100% of the time in 100% of the courts in the US.
And then attacked the officers fist with your jaw.
Ah yes, the Zimmerman style of fighting. Attack your opponent's fist with your face.
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."
You ALWAYS go to fucking TRIAL! Always! These trumped up prosecutions would stop if everyone exercised their right to a TRIAL!
My wife was accused of criminal negligence with regards to an accident involving a retarded minor. She was facing 6 years in PMITV prison!
Well, three days before jury selection was scheduled to start -- they offered a new plea deal, this time with a misdemeanor charge and 1 year of probation. Called their fucking bluffs!
PS: If I had the money for a trial, we would have said no and got the charges dropped completely
Didn't you just demonstrate exactly why many people *don't* go to trial (including yourself?) The government holds all the cards - not only can they can hold a max sentence prosecution over your head making the stakes too high to gamble, but they *also* can play dirty with the evidence and stack the deck in their favor making it more likely that they will win. And since they are prosecuting with your tax dollars, they get unlimited funds to spend on the prosecution.
It's easy to say "Everyone should go to trial!" but when it's your (or your wife's) butt on the line, it's not so easy to face years of prison time -- as you so clearly demonstrated with your story. You didn't call their bluff - they called yours - they sweetened the pot on the plea deal because they wanted you to admit to the crime so they get yet another successful prosecution - and you did exactly what they wanted.
I admit, IANAL, but doesn't this give grounds for any convicted drug felon to try for a retroactive mistrial?
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
Any physicist can tell you that "being invisible" is no defence against a sniper's bullet.
The problem here is, the entire "Parallel construction" is being used to hide the fact that the tree was poisoned. In fact, there is no reason to have parellel construction otherwise, since it actually adds nothing to the case: If you had enough evidence to pull him over and search him, then you don't need to wait for him to "drive erratically". If you didn't, then it doesn't give you any.
There is no other purpose here than to hide the poisoning of the tree so that it cannot be defended against.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
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?
How is that "parallel construction?" Your observations established probable cause for the raid. That was linear construction.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
The cops said, "There isn't anything we can do." I said, sure there is. [ ... explains to Cops how to do their fucking job ...]
This is even sadder than the time a junior programmer, just out of college, asked me, "how do I debug a program".
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
You didn't call their bluff - they called yours - they sweetened the pot on the plea deal because they wanted you to admit to the crime so they get yet another successful prosecution ...
Which is *all* prosecutors really care about - winning not truth. Only winning convictions helps their careers. Sad but, from my experience, true.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
The correct spelling is USSA.
...and shortly thereafter all the "druggies" found new suppliers, the can was kicked down to some other neighborhood, addiction rates didn't change, since they never really do more than the yearly fluctuations.
All because the real problem wasn't them, it was the government and police who created the situation where opening up a storefront in a residential garage looked like a good and profitable idea.
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
It is however true that you can get a better plea deal by threatening to go to trial, especially if the prosecutor has to work it's ass off to get a conviction. It's a gambit, but if your lawyer feels they have a weak case, they may not be willing to spend hours and hours of their time to get a meaningless (to them) conviction. The legal system's always been a circus where if you show them you're hard to get they'll be a lot more wary. The alternative is they'll destroy your life without remorse.
> I don't think that I dare hope for a setup that cute, though.
What do you think the entire DEA is for ?
All the DEA does is cut down the competition so the price rises and the CIA can get more money for their off book black ops. You don't really think those drugs get smuggled without help, now, do you?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
Did these "druggies" actually hurt anybody? I mean besides flipping you off and blocking you in your driveway. It seems that you just didn't like them, and they happened to be a minor inconvenience (not unlike someone playing loud music or just being an asshole), and what they were doing happened to be illegal and you took advantage of that.
I would say in an ideal world we would end the war on drugs, rather than manufacturing reasons to make criminals out of people that aren't hurting anyone (except maybe themselves), and in the process funneling money to brutal drug cartels.
I don't think you were wrong to call the cops on them. I wouldn't want a bunch of drug deals going down where I lived either, but I think the real problem is that because it's illegal, it attracts a criminal element, and not the other way around.