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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.
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
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.
Had I read for just a minute longer, I'd have found this. So it would seem I was correct.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
"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?
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.
[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.
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
(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.
Like we didn't already know this was going on...
Sure we did.
But we now know that the DEA probably gets its info from the NSA, and hands it down further to your local sheriff.
Worst case, is the sheriff gets cornered on the witness stand and fesses up that the defendant's name came up in
a DEA investigation.
That leaves a dead end, because nobody is going to get very far demanding discovery against the DEA, and no one will be any the wiser about the fact that your name came up from an email harvest by the NSA.
In other words, if you think you are only two layers deep (DEA--->Sheriff) you have to be kidding yourself.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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 we now know that the DEA probably gets its info from the NSA, and hands it down further to your local sheriff.
Not probably; definitely. From TFA:
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security.
The best thing about UDP jokes is I don't care if you get them or not
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?
then it's up to the jury to rule the constitutional way
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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!!!