FBI and DEA Under Review For Misuse of NSA Mass Surveillance Data

Patrick O'Neill writes: The FBI and DEA were among the agencies fed information from an NSA surveillance program described as "staggering" by one judge who helped strike the program down. Now the two agencies are under review by the Justice Department for the use of parallel construction as well as looking into the specifics and results of cases originating from NSA tips. (Here's some more on the practice of parallel construction in this context.)

Comments

My money is on....

[TheCarp]

After investigating themselves, no wrongdoing will be found.

I never find wrongdoing when I investigate myself. At least not anything that needs to be discussed in public, just a little internal housekeeping, you know, minor discipline issues, nothing to make a federal case over.

One thing you can be certain of: This will lead to exactly 0 prosecutions, no matter how much abuse is found.

Re:My money is on....

[93 Escort Wagon]

I disagree. I think wrongdoing will be found... a few minor, isolated cases. That will give the government a chance to point out how the abuses are "minor" when compared to the "proven benefits" of the Surveillance State, as well a chance to talk about how they are "constantly improving" an already careful program so it's even better about not collecting any important information from "ordinary, law-abiding citizens"
M

lies, damn lies, and sworn testimony

[Pseudonymous Powers]

The basic problem here is that "parallel construction" equals "lying under oath". Once judges start accepting outright lies, it rots the (already slightly decayed) system right down to the core.

It's like when they're trying to indoctrinate you to be a terrorist, and they make you perform some unspeakably abominable act as your initiation. After that, you won't question your decision to join this iffy organization, because that would mean that you did this unforgivable thing, not for the greater good, but just because a bunch of assholes told you to. Which makes you yourself not only an asshole but also an idiot.

So these judges will not only accept lies as testimony, they will defend the practice to the death, to anyone who raises the very obvious point that you shouldn't base your system of justice on blatant lies. Otherwise they're assholes and idiots, and nobody wants to admit that they're an idiot asshole.

Re:lies, damn lies, and sworn testimony

[gweihir]

The second problem is that there is a good reason not to have secret agencies feed law enforcement. The thing is, secret agencies are not bound by law in how they obtain their information, so nobody has any protection against them or any recourse under the law. Having them give information to law enforcement completely negates the essential checks and balances any working legal system has. Hence the DEA and FBI had to commit perjury on a mass-scale in order to use that information. That they were willing to do so already demonstrates the problem very clearly.

To make it amply clear: If secret agencies feed law enforcement in your state, then you life in a police state or worse.

Re:lies, damn lies, and sworn testimony

[kilfarsnar]

The idea is not to admit the fruits of warrantless searches and coerced confessions, but to avoid suppressing valid evidence for pointless technical reasons.

The technical reasons are not pointless. They are there to keep Law Enforcement honest. It seems they are not entirely successful on that front.

If they discover valid evidence by violating your rights, you don't really have rights. As always, the ends don't justify the means. Police and prosecutors bitch about technicalities because they don't care about your rights; they only care about convicting you, guilty or not. It is entirely proper that a guilty person go free on a technicality. It shows that even guilty people have rights, as it should be.

Let's be clear here ...

[gstoddart]

Parallel construction is effectively perjury at a huge scale.

What it's doing is giving them access to information they either aren't supposed to have, or are unwilling to admit to having. And then they come up with a carefully crafted lie about how they might have found this information from another source.

This bit of creative writing has the effect of denying you the ability to see the evidence against you, and know where it comes from.

It allows them to operate with impunity, while essentially denying you a fair trial ... because the bullshit story they make up about how they heard from a guy who heard it form a guy is exactly that: bullshit.

It's government agencies who are bypassing decades of court decisions about proper procedures and rules of evidence, and using secret laws and bold-faced lies to be able to trump up whatever charges they have, with information obtained through questionable means, and the lying to suppress the real source of the information to cheat the system and deny you the ability to know how they really got it.

This is as bad as any Soviet era secret police ever was, precisely because it bypasses all legal safeguards, and totally ignores the law as it pertains to knowing the evidence against you and how it is obtained.

Any police agency doing this is, in my opinion, committing a crime. There's no other way to see this other than these organizations lying to courts, and providing local police with a fucking manual to also lie to the courts.

Give us your fucking papers, comrade.

Watch what happens in a month -

[pecosdave]

this story is forgotten, swept under the rug, no longer referenced.

Just as suddenly as it appeared in the news, it disappears from the news and our short memories caused by modern low attention-span media causes us to forget.

Then the parallel construction and misuse of data will continue.

Just like everyone has forgotten about the persecution of real reporters that began in 08 and was heavily reported on for a short time. We still have mainstream news that's a result of what happened back then, but no mention of that fact.

Just like everyone forgets about the global cooling scare that was a big deal in the 70's and still covered in the 80's.

Just like everyone forgets about the various legal entities that have found "the smoking gun" and plan to go after the administration or some other powerful organization, never to hear anything more about it past the initial breaking news stories.

This one will fall off the earth too.