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The DEA Disinformation Campaign To Hide Surveillance Techniques
An anonymous reader writes: Ken White at Popehat explains how the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency has been purposefully sowing disinformation to hide the extent of their surveillance powers. The agency appears to have used a vast database of telecommunications metadata, which they acquired via general (read: untargeted, dragnet-style) subpoenas. As they begin building cases against suspected criminals, they trawl the database for relevant information. Of course, this means the metadata of many innocent people is also being held and occasionally scanned. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a lawsuit to challenge this bulk data collection. The DEA database itself seems to have been shut down in 2013, but not before the government argued that it should be fine not only to engage in this collection, but to attempt to hide it during court cases. The courts agreed, which means this sort of surveillance could very well happen again — and the EFF is trying to prevent that.
(points at DEA) Hideki!
i do the same thing to convince my users that i don't install viruses on their computers... but i still install viruses on their computers. disinformation is the best!
Use my SEOChat.com and ChatButton.com services so i can install viruses on your users computers!
This is a direct result of the pen register ruling. Unfortunately it's hard to argue this is unconstitutional since records kept by a company aren't really your effects. This overreach is going to have to be solved with legislation.
If sowing disinformation is legal and the courts agree, then the information that the DEA shutdown its database in 2013 is probably disinformation. Only the legislative branch can do something to investigate because the other two branches of government already have agreed that lies are A-OK. But if it's security-related, investigating members of Congress will be sworn to secrecy anyway -- which won't be a problem for most of them because they tend to prostrate themselves fawningly before the state instruments of control.
Thank heavens it's springtime.
I agree that the surveillance issue is bad but it's much worse when the DEA creates false evidence trails to hide the surveillance links to their own programs and that of the NSA. This puts the basic principles of justice out the window when you have DEA agents lying on the witness stand about how they obtained their information. A judge could ostensibly throw out convictions or exclude evidence based on those facts, sanctioning prosecutors for knowingly allowing this to happen at trial. It's fucking stupid to expose the nation to this kind of risk.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
But when they purposefully lie to conceal where the evidence came from, how are they any better than the criminals they put away? You can't send someone to jail for years based on a lie.
It is possible to see a clear spin and attempt to manage the conversation. New type of data has been invented - Metadata, and spy agencies are claiming that this is not covered by 4th amendment.
Imagine you are observer, and you see individual Joe, interacting (both visiting and calling) her married co-worker's Janice home every time Janice' husband is having an out-of-town business trip. You, the observer, do not have information on what is happening outside, but you have a metadata: telephone calls and cellphone location records. Everyone, Janice' husband, Joe's spouse, their families and neighbours, would be asking the same type of question because this data is more than Metadata. A reasonable observer will understand that this is most likely an extramarital affair going on, and such information is clearly personal.
Yet, it was called Metadata. In fact Metadata is in many ways more valuable than actual contents.
The next topic is "general warrant". One of the reason US revolution took place is because of unhappiness due to King George's general warrants, allowing to search everyone without reason. The outcome was 4th amendment which clearly defined that persons and their private life are untouchable, unless there is suspicion, affirmed by the government servant and approved by the judge.
Let's call bulk data collection with the real name: mass spying.
The next attempt to narrow down the discussion is to call phone data collection. In reality every voluntary transaction which has electronic record and involuntary electronic record keeping (vehicle number plates, faces are being scanned, emails, social network etc.) are being aggregated and no rarely mentioned in the discussion.
Funny thing about that Canadian girlfriend, they've used her in 7 other cases as the alternative source for the evidence. Maybe she's the sysadmin for a database in Canada?
The government tells citizens "if you're not doing anything wrong, you shouldn't need to hide anything". We might as well say it right back to government. Also, since we are paying for everything they do, that information is ours. The government doing things it doesn't want us to know about is inherently immoral and dishonest. After all, they are doing all of those things "in our name".
"Canadian Girlfriend" -- on of Grand Funk's less successful songs.
once that earworm's run it course, can somebody please post a set of plausible lyrics to that song?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
then can I acquire the same data so that I can search for information on Judges and other government officials.
I mean if its not against the law then I should have access to the same type of data.
Which are international treaties and have the force of law, greater than that of a law passed by Congress.
(it's in the Constitution, in case you didn't know, the part that talks about Quartering Troops In Your Computers To Spy For The Redcoats)
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Am I the only one who thinks we'd all be better off shutting the system down? If the system is working against the people its time to shut it down. I'm not a right-wing nut job suggesting this. If I think it's time its certainly must be. I think its one issue we could all unite on. Republicans, democrats, right wing nutters, libertarians, socialists, etc.
I've not heard a single person say "please spy on me, steal from me, rape me, and take away my children, ohh and then torture me some more". Yet this is EXACTLY what is going on. The governments spying on us all, it's taking our money/homes/cars at random under seizure laws, conducting searches without warrants, taking our kids based on the flimsiest of evidence and handing them over to murders and child rapists.
And if your in the minority they flat out shoot you. While the mass shooting of blacks are only being publicized now it's not like its a new thing. They don't event bother pretending as if they're going to give you a trial like they do with some white protestant adult male folk (not that even they get a fair trial, as the federal guilty plea rate has risen from 83% in 1983 to 96% in 2009, a rise attributed largely to the Sentencing Guidelines.).
What else do they have to start doing before we say enough is enough?
The next topic is "general warrant". One of the reason US revolution took place is because of unhappiness due to King George's general warrants, allowing to search everyone without reason. The outcome was 4th amendment which clearly defined that persons and their private life are untouchable, unless there is suspicion, affirmed by the government servant and approved by the judge.
Spying on the population was also a big driver behind the THIRD amendment:
While forcing the colonists to provide housing and upkeep for the soldiers sent to oppress them was an economic issue, there was more to it than that.
A soldier "quartered" in a colonist's house also served as a spy for the crown and its army. He eavesdropped on the conversations of the family and visiting friends. He had the opportunity to view their records when they weren't home (or even if they were). He reported anything suspicious to his unit. His presence inhibited getting together with others to hold private discussions, especially about opposing (by protest or otherwise) anything the government was doing. He was a continuous walking search, fed and housed by the people he was investigating.
It seems to me that law-enforcement and intelligence agency spyware, such as keyloggers and various data exfiltration tools, is EXACTLY the digital equivalent: It is a digital agent that "lives" in the home or office of the target. It consums the target's resources (disk space, CPU cycles network bandwidth) to support itself. It spies spying on the activities and "papers" of the target, reporting anything suspicious (or anything, actually) back to its commander, to be used as evidence and/or to trigger an arrest or other attack. It is ready, at a moment's notice, to forcefully interfere with, destroy, or corrupt the target's facilities or send forged messages from him.
Spyware is EXACTLY one of the most egregious acts (one of the "Intolerable Acts") that sparked the American Revolution. I'd love to see the Third brought back out of the doldrums and used against these "digital soldiers" the government is "quartering" inside our personal and private computing devices.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A person drives along, is stopped 'because his lane changes were erratic' (actually because NSA/FBI had told local DEA to stop the vehicle and make the drug arrest and lie about the instruction).
Now DEA can claim that the person was a drug smuggler and it doesn't make a difference that they lied about the origin of the arrest, but was he?
One of the Snowden leaks regarded JTRIG, the UK version which I'm sure has a US equivalent. A division designed to smear by false accusation, undermine business, troll on forums, hack polls, honey-traps etc.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26049448
So a DEA official is told to stop a car on a drugs bust. HOW DOES HE KNOW HE ISN'T BEING USED TO COVER A DRUG PLANTING OP?
The defendant can't point to the reason he was targetted for the bust and suggest it was planted evidence, because the evidence trail is concealed from the court.