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

Unchecked power will ALWAYS be abused

[NotDrWho]

There was a great episode of the old Penn & Teller show "Bullshit!" that dealt with this. They hired a bunch of random people as security monitors, gave them access to surveillance cameras, and told them not to use the cameras to spy on people's private lives (only on the fake security perimeter). Sure enough, 90% of them used the cameras to spy on people's personal shit.

Re:Unchecked power will ALWAYS be abused

[TheCarp]

This. When I worked in hospital IT we were warned several times, the single most common reason for anyone in the hospital to be fired, is inappropriate records access. They had implemented auditing years ago. In fact, a decade before I worked at the hospital, my mother did, and there was a huge scandal involving medical records and a famous patient.

By the time I left, they were implementing real time flagging. The system was able to flag on all sorts of things, accessing records within your family, accessing records of people who live near you, all things people actually do with alarming regularity when given access to records.

The old adage is "power corrupts" and it is apt. People will misuse power given to them. Will all of them all the time? No. However, enough will and its impossible to say who will and who wont because almost every single one will given the right motivation or excuse.

Re:Let's be clear here ...

[gstoddart]

They are going to argue that its not 'fruit of poison' as long as they reasonably could found it thru normal means.

See, the problem with that is it ignores how they actually got it.

When you have information you're not supposed to have, and you can look back and then put together a bullshit argument about how you could have gotten it, it has nothing at all to do with reality.

It is the fruit of the poison tree, because it was obtained without probable cause, and because the origins of it are being hidden from the accused.

It's perjury, plain and simple. And if law enforcement is being encouraged to commit perjury, that pretty much means the justice system is completely fucked.

It's taking information you can't justify having, and then effectively framing someone you believe is guilty but couldn't prove to a standard the courts would reject by re-building your evidence retroactively to suit your story.

If the cops are doing that, they should be imprisoned, or shot on sight.

Parallel Construction Should Be Prosecuted

[mbone]

My personal feeling is that parallel construction should be prosecuted as a felony. It's perjury, abuse of the juridicial process and contempt of court, and in a fundamental way (not some playing loose along the edges). Send someone to trial over this, and watch the abuse stop.