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DEA Presentation Shows How Agency Hides Investigative Methods From Trial Review
v3rgEz writes "CJ Ciaramella stumbled upon some interesting documents with a recent FOIA request: The DEA's training materials regarding parallel construction, the practice of reverse engineering the evidence chain to keep how the government actually knows something happened away from prosecutors, the defense, and the public. 'Americans don't like it,' the materials note, when the government relies heavily on classified sources, so agents are encouraged to find ways to get the same information through tactics like 'routine' traffic stops that coincidentally find the information agents are after. Public blowback, along with greater criminal awareness, are cited among the reasons for keeping the actual methodologies beyond the reach of even the prosecutors working with the DEA on the cases."
Prohibition creates corruption at all levels of society. Lessons from history learned: zero. Film at 11.
Americans don't like it,' the materials note, when the government relies heavily on classified sources
That doesn't mean you need to find a way to "fake" the chain of evidence. It means that Americans don't fucking like classified evidence, what with our constitution guaranteeing us the right to face our accusers. As in, our actual accusers, not some fictional "these guys who just happened to smell bomb-making chemicals on your breath" accusers.
You want to keep the public off your backs, quit playing all these bullshit "Big Brother knows best" games, and if you can't come out and say how you know something, keep it to yourselves.
The people responsible for this should be put on trial and if found guilty, sent to prison. Even though the DEA has been fucking over the very people with the power to put them on trial, I doubt any pros will be moved enough to do jack shit about it.
The DEA are the real criminals.
Not all evidence is admissable in court. Evidence that is illegally obtainted can't be used in a prosecution. And any resulting evidence (like from a traffic stop as described in the article) is excluded as fruit of the poisoned tree. So this DEA "parallel construction" is not only a subversion of the intent of the law but is actually a conspriacy to subvert justice. The people who organized and practiced this system are guilty of a crime.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
but they want everyone to think high tech big brother sees all, knows all...
The DEA also have a presentation on how to void the slashdot beta site.
captcha: rimjob
The underlying problem here is that prohibition is a failed policy, and yet another form of moral panic.
As such, the DEA has an impossible task (enforcing the failed policy), and yet also knows that everything they do to enforce that policy is Right (justified by the moral panic).
Hence, they will cheat once, they will cheat always, they will make deals with the Devil, just to "win".
And this is the modus operandi for an organization that operates a fleet of drones.
In the end revolution occurs because, eventually, enough people completely lose faith in their government.
Unfortunately for most values of John Q US Citizen, nobody has the balls for it any more.
That doesn't mean there WILL NOT be a revolution
But rather that it's building up a MUCH bigger head of steam, and when it does eventually blow (most likely due to some kind of global disaster which impacts The US) it will be one appallingly unholy holocaust.
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
Even more so then, if they are keeping them in the dark you know it's got to be illegal.
Is thinking this is new, when it's a dupe.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
The whole system is corrupt from the bottom up. The best thing is to do your damndest to stay out of the system and become a person of interest because they will do anything to get you. The Law is not something they pay attention to.
Understand that, LAW enforcement and judicial are above the law, You can not win if you play their game.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hi.
Here's the complete presentation deck without the annoying reader:
for ((n = 1;n <= 276;n++))
do
wget "https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1011382/pages/responsive-documents-p$n-normal.gif"
done
Cheers!
http://eugeneciurana.com | http://ciurana.eu
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They are officers of the court, and not of the executive. This was made explicit by ex parte Garland shortly after the civil war.
But it is nice to know they are responding to relevant FOIA requests. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/...
I'm trying to figure out why the DEA even exists. I know it exists to enforce drug laws but that is not what I mean. I found out a couple interesting facts about the DEA. One is that the DEA shares jurisdiction with the FBI. Any crime the DEA investigates the FBI can also investigate. That was something undoubtedly enacted to smooth over the politics of creating a new federal law enforcement agency.
Another interesting fact is that the DEA shares authority with the FDA on the classification of drugs. I'm not quite sure on how this authority is shared but the DEA has some sort of say in how the Controlled Substances Act is applied to new and existing drugs.
So, what does the DEA actually do that some other federal agency cannot? Apparently it can violate our rights and get away with it. It seems to me that the FBI somehow keeps itself above this crap. Perhaps its because the DEA is so good at violating our rights that the FBI lets them do the dirty work. Perhaps it's because the FBI is too busy investigating murders, assaults, rapes, arson, thefts, and so on (you know, "real" crimes) that they don't have to resort to such depths to keep busy.
The way things are going now with the federal government turning a blind eye to violations of federal prohibitions on marijuana trade I suspect we are going to see marijuana reclassified under the Controlled Substances Act in less than five years. It might not be complete legalization and getting dropped from all controls but something has to change. I see marijuana getting federal control somewhere between alcohol and tobacco (getting carded upon purchase, high taxes, etc.) and Tylenol (strict laws on labeling, purity controls, but generally over the counter).
I recall that the DEA gets most of its arrests and convictions from marijuana. When (not if, it's going to happen) marijuana laws change the DEA is going to have a real hard time justifying its own existence.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
This is why you just don't let TPTB--in whatever combination of governments or corporations--collect the mundane and fine details of your life... because the twin sister of the "parallel construction" is the "fishing expedition".
And neither of these demons permits the herded ones to stare back; They are a pat-and-proven recipe for the inversion of healthy private-vs-open interrelationships.
I've long wanted a way to get around those applet-things.
Plausible Deniability, it's not just for presidents anymore!
I would be ok with the practice if everyone who does it went to jail along with the person they bust. Even if the suspect is ultimately found not guilty the parallel constructionist should still go to jail.
> All this evidence, collected this way, is admissable because it could have been discovered
The ccops illegally tap your phone line and hear about a pot deal.
What did not happen is that a a K9 officer COULD HAVE been taking the dog out for a walk when they just happened to walk by a car full of pot. That didn't happen, but it could have.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you are claiming that the cops can search the vehicle and it's not fruit of a poisonous tree because they could have stumbled upon it. They didn't, but they could have. Do you have a citation for that? In all of American jurisprudence has any appeals court held that it's okay to violate the Constitution because they could have not violated it? I know a certain "law professor" (who never taught law) who might believe that, but has the court ever ruled such?
Search warrants, arrest warrants, and indictments are based on sworn statements. It's obstruction of justice to lie on those sworn statements.
The very existence of this document is evidence of a conspiracy to deny civil rights under color of law. This is both a civil and a criminal issue.
IMHO it should be trivial to show that the authors of this document, along with all adminstrators and instructors who used it in training agents and all agents who, having attended such training, committed any of the described acts, have committed a felony.
I wonder if civil RICO suits might be brought, as well. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
No, the ruling is about private citizens who are "not acting as an agent of the government", meaning not even at the BEHEST of government. Clearly the NSA is government, so that doesn't apply to them. As government agents, any evidence produced by the NSA is inadmissible IN A CRIMINAL CASE unless it was legally obtained.
The Feds claimed that they caught Dread Pirate Roberts not by breaking TOR but because a package of fake IDs being shipped from Canada was randomly searched. (What luck!) I just thought of that while reading this. Coincidentally.
the perpetrators going to jail for the felony "obstruction of justice"? Because that's what it is: they are hiding details from the judges that would be required to make a ruling according to the governing law, denying the defendants due process.
The law is not something for the DEA to "tweak" behind the judges' backs.
See also how Homeland Security was established to be an Agency to Centralize Intelligence. The exact motive could be considered at length - was it because the CIA came up short or was it because the stuff it came up with was not acted on pretending a new group was needed was a face saving exercise? I'm sure there's other options but an entirely new group instead of building on the old raises a lot of questions since it makes no practical sense.
Maybe both the DEA and Homeland Security were designed to be little empires as rewards for friends of the powerful?
DNA analysis proves a convicted man was not a rapist. The prosecutors' respsonse? They got the right man; the DNA is just that of an un-indicted co-conspirator they haven't caught yet (but didn't bother to mention during the trial). Chance of it being a minority defendant? ~90%. Yay, 'justice'.
If this is not a conspiracy to use powers at the same time denying their enemies, the Americans, due process and potentially exculpatory information, then I do not know what is.
Even the prosecutor doesn't know about the parallel case. If the prosecution, defense and judge don't know about the illegal parallel case, then nobody's going to ask that the information be delivered.
It might just become standard practice now for defense attorneys to demand any parallel case information. That will put someone on the line for misconduct sanctions, and be good grounds for appeal, if there is one and it's later discovered.
Really? This is news?
In Cryponomicon, they create a special unit (Detachment 2702) to guard the secret of the Bletchley Park. This unit is engaged in actively feeding misinformation to the enemy and arranging "accidental" discoveries. For example, if decrypted information says that a convoy of German ships is moving from port A to port B, they determine about where that convoy should be at this time and "arrange" for a patrol aircraft to fly over the area and spot it. When the Allies, subsequently, bomb the heck out of the convoy, the Germans don't ponder "how did they know?" They know the convoy was spotted by an Allied aircraft before the bombers arrived on the scene.
In one part of the book, a tramp steamer, operated by a bunch of people from this unit, "stumble" on a German "milk cow" submarine refueling/rearming an attack sub in the Caribbean. And Allied ships are promptly called in to depth charge the silly thing. The Germans don't have to ask how the allies knew it was there. They "stumbled on" it. The Germans are left to assume that they are just having really rotten luck. And that the Allies have a lot more patrol aircraft than they really do.
Yes, Cryptonomicon is a work of fiction. Such things are, however, perfectly believable. The Allies went to great lengths to hide the fact that we could read their encrypted transmissions. A great many German officers, after the war, were told that we had been "reading their mail" for much of the war, and were utterly astounded. They had no idea. Such a good job had been done at keeping the secret.
Protecting confidential sources? Arranging "accidental" discoveries of the necessary evidence? Gee, this sounds awfully familiar.
... by the Dew of Mountains the thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning
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