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.

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

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no reach with the definition he used.

The police find the information by way of violating the law.
Having uncovered the information in question, they concoct some *other* way that they can or could have discovered it.
In court, under oath, they claim to have found the information this *other* way. That's the lie.

"Parallel construction" is a known violation of the defendant's rights, cloaked in a lie to keep said violation secret.

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.