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The DEA Disinformation Campaign To Hide Surveillance Techniques

Posted by Soulskill on from the you-can-trust-us dept.

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.

5 of 46 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Supreme Court Decisions Have Consequences by Tokolosh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The courts have completely abdicated their responsibility to protect the people from the depredations of the Leviathan. The judicial branch of government is as complicit as the executive and legislative, and needs to shaken up pronto.

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    Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
  2. bad but creating false evidence trails is worse by Virtucon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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"
    1. Re:bad but creating false evidence trails is worse by kbonin · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "Parallel Construction" is a fundamental part of police work now. When Federal law enforcement orders local law enforcement to lie to judges and prosecutors (Stingrays, etc.), whats really left? The last few generations of law enforcement, and the continuing example from the top of the executive branch on down, makes it clear that it is now perfectly acceptable and even expected if not required behavior to lie to everyone, including other branches of government. The historical checks and balances are almost all gone now...

  3. Re:everyone does this by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Of course, you're not running a lucrative multi-billion dollar snake-oil business like the head of the DEA is.

  4. hiding what you do by chilenexus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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".