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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 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
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Comment removed based on user account deletion
They are officers of the court, and not of the executive. This was made explicit by ex parte Garland shortly after the civil war.
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.
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.
> 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?
And that is precisely the difficulty around parallel construction.
The government cannot withhold potentially exculpatory evidence. In the late 1960s, right after the SCOTUS decided the Brady case, prosecutors gave quite a lot of information to defendants. Over the years prosecutors and judges have taken progressively stricter interpretations to the point where they routinely withhold everything again, only handing over the minimum that they think might fall under Brady and often only if the defense uses very specifically worded discovery demands. If the prosecutors can argue that they didn't think it was material evidence, or argue that the discovery demand wasn't quite specific enough, they can get away with it. And since the defense doesn't know about the evidence (as it was withheld from them) they almost always get away with it.
In very recent time, perhaps the last 18 months or so, there has been a surge in claims of withheld exculpatory evidence, and judges are increasingly more sympathetic to defendants during discovery. There have been quite a few major cases where prosecutors realize that maybe some of the evidence might have been potentially exculpatory, but often their excuses are enough to keep judges from dismissing the case outright. Both behaviors are changing, and we have multiple cases going right now in my state that are currently on the fast track for the state supreme court where evidence was "accidentally" withheld (except some leaked information shows it was quite intentional as the defense 'would never know') but prosecutors and judges had a wink-and-a-nod when it was discovered to be "accidentally" withheld. (There is a very active public debate about this right now; since prosecutors are immune for these violations and they are kept employed based on their results rather than fairness, they have every incentive to break the law with impunity.)
Parallel construction is nearly impossible to detect, and if discovered is subject to the exclusionary rules. Depending on the nature of the construction and the interpretation of the judge, it could exclude no evidence, some evidence, or be enough to cause the case to be dismissed entirely. The problem is that when it happens you don't have any evidence that it happened. Prosecutors and officers might not even know it happened, since groups like the DEA use anonymous tips to police for the construction. Even though the entire case might be tainted enough for dismissal, it is possible nobody directly involved (even the police and prosecutors) know about the unlawfulness because it was laundered through anonymous reporting systems.
//TODO: Think of witty sig statement
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