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.

Comments

everyone does this

[Darrin Ward PR]

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!

Re:Supreme Court Decisions Have Consequences

[Tokolosh]

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.

bad but creating false evidence trails is worse

[Virtucon]

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.