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Prosecutors Halt Vast, Likely Illegal DEA Wiretap Operation (usatoday.com)
schwit1 writes: Prosecutors in a Los Angeles suburb say they have dramatically scaled back a vast and legally questionable eavesdropping operation, built by federal drug agents, that once accounted for nearly a fifth of all U.S. wiretaps. The wiretapping, authorized by prosecutors and a single state-court judge in Riverside County, alarmed privacy advocates and even some U.S. Justice Department lawyers, who warned that it was likely illegal. An investigation last year by The Desert Sun and USA TODAY found that the operation almost certainly violated federal wiretapping laws, while using millions of secretly intercepted calls and texts to make hundreds of arrests nationwide. Riverside's district attorney, Mike Hestrin, acknowledged being concerned by the scope of that surveillance, and said he enacted "significant" reforms last summer to rein it in. Wiretap figures his office released this week offer the first evidence that the enormous eavesdropping program has wound down to more routine levels.
It's as simple as that.
For anyone responsible to even see a trial.
--
https://technet.microsoft.com/...
yeah, it's OK when it's routine. that's what i tell my wife.
yup should just shoot them, they are better off dead rather than wasting tax dollars on trials and jail.
they got enough "evidence" to construct the cases they were looking for (i.e. enough to make the agents in charge 'look good').. and of course, they only stopped once they themselves got caught... and it took them months, to do that.
DEA is just a bad joke until we start drug testing doctors annually.
Outmaneuvering many thousands of drug peddlers is a feat of epic proportions. Those maniacs may well murder more sweet innocent citizens than all of the lunatics in the terror organizations in all nations combined. Selling or using illegal recreational pharmaceuticals fatally poisons billions... nay, TRILLIONS, of people annually! Those maimed or led to ruination is so many orders or magnitude higher it's beyond comprehension! /s
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Here we see the tragic results of a small-minded individual clearly incapable of critical thought swallowing Reagan-era propaganda whole. Get a good look while you can, kids. Soon this type of thinking will only be on display in textbooks and museums.
If the problem is illegal drugs then you have a pretty easy solution: legalize them.
Problem solved. And as an added bonus, you get a nice tax boost.
The DEA can go fuck themselves, as far as I'm concerned. Since their inception, they've been some of the worst abusers of the US population to date. They're huge proponents of such treats as early dawn no-knock raids, parallel construction (institutionalized perjury), the use of Stingray type devices, and the list goes on.
As soon as we end this neo-prohibitionist bullshit and the jackbooted thugs that get off on it, we can have a better shot of rebuilding our country.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Your sarcasm detector appears to be malfunctioning. Please hand in your geek card and report back to headquarters for reprogramming.
Problem solved. And as an added bonus, you get a nice tax boost.
More like one problem solved, a new one created. By most reasonable metrics the new problems are smaller than the old one, so it's a net gain for society; but still hardly "problem solved".
Taxing medicine twice is among the more evil things one can imagine.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
http://www.livescience.com/360...
250k a year world wide. Hardly millions. How many simply because it is a black market and you have violence and poorly manufactured chemicals?
Wake the fuck up.
Silence is a state of mime.
Acquire evidence illegally, then use it to find something else you can burn the black guy over. The DEA is immoral and deceptive to its core, pretending to be an enemy of drugs all the while knowing damn well that if there were no drugs, there would be no DEA.
I guess I'm in the minority that see government agencies who break our laws, as far worse than individual criminals. Sure drug dealers are bad, but secret goverment surveillance on millions of US citizens is far worse.
Who is protecting US citizens from our goverment? It should not be OK for goverment officials to break laws, then simply "dial back" when caught red handed, with no fear of public trials like other citizens who use illegal wire taps. I thought we just had once Constitution and one set of laws, not special rules for those who this they're different. Where can I get the special copy?
This! This! But you forgot the most important part; authorities should be allowed to do anything if it ultimately protects the children! ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
They say ignorance of the law is no excuse. When can we expect the prosecutions of those who broke the law to begin? Or all the retrials for convictions based on illegal evidence?
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Wiretapping is generally a crime, but I agree that there is no way government wiretappers will every be charged or convicted.
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/12/15/3603686/supreme-court-if-youre-a-cop-mistakes-about-the-law-wont-stop-your-drug-bust/
And that was an 8-1 ruling, so nothing Obama or the next President does to the Court is going to change the new law that ignorance of the law IS an excuse if you are responsible for enforcing the law.
Donald, is that you?
...politicians who are able to show any sense about criminal justice issues.
This isn't because they're any better on the issue. It's because they have the freedom to actually use their heads. Democrats are, in general, too terrified of being Willie Horton-ed to do anything but try and prove their tough on crime. Give the police anything they want, whore for the district attorneys and the prison guards, appoint prosecutors to the bench, etc., etc., etc. That's why Bill Clinton signed the (terrible) 1994 crime bill, and why California Governor Gray Davis issued a blanket ban on parole for murder convictions.
The terrible thing is that means the only remotely sane criminal justice policy comes from some Republicans. They aren't actually any good on the issues. A lot of time they've just decided something like "locking up all these poor folks and black folks for years on end costs so much I can't afford to give any more tax cuts to the rich." But they're better than the terrified Dems.
As Spock once told Kirk: "Only Nixon can go to China."
And most of those deaths are from poor quality control due to lack of government oversight on an illegal product. And traffic accidents actually do kill over 1 million per year but politicians ignore that. Great conspiracy theory, map the drug use by demographic and you find the drug of choice for "socially undesirable" racial groups perfectly aligns with American drug laws.
But you forgot the most important part; authorities should be allowed to do anything if it ultimately protects the children! ;-)
If they *say* it protects the children. Any actual benefit to any actual children is strictly optional.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
So 42 years of the DEA, and we're still fighting "The War on Drugs". War is hell, I guess. While we're fighting, we're coming to the realization that maybe marijuana really isn't a danger, that it isn't worth the effort to chase down and prosecute stoners and weed farmers. Is what the DEA is doing to our civil liberties, here and in other countries, really better than the alternative of just letting people do drugs? It doesn't sound like the DEA is stopping anybody who really wants to smoke or shoot up. Here in S.E. Massachusetts we have rampant opioid overdose problems, and that situation exists in a lot of places in the U.S. Maybe, just maybe, it is a demand problem instead of a supply problem?
If we took a fraction of the money that goes to the DEA and actually spent it on something useful, like decriminalizing and properly treating addiction as the medical condition it really is , demand would drop, street prices would drop, and the incentive to perpetrate criminal activities associated with the drug trade would dry up. People would be healthier, not living in prisons on the taxpayers dime, and we wouldn't have to pay taxes to a TLA to butt rape our constitutional freedoms anymore.
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
Honestly. If they were breaking the law this long, how is ANYTHING coming out of this operation NOT "fruit of the poisonous tree"?
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
The worst thing about this egregious program, and for that matter,all the big "tap them all!" programs, is that this one didn't even dent crime.
Riverside, the most monitored place in the US outside of a prison cell, had no less crime than anywhere else in the LA area. So it did NOTHING.
Fuckers. You take away our privacy in the name of protecting us but you fail to actually even do that, and yet we're left without our privacy and nobody holds you accountable for lying and failing to do your apparently job. What a bullshit world this is.
Sig for hire.
OK, we've got "Murphy's Law" and a dozen more like it. We need to come up with a name now for a law that says something like, "Every time you hand power over to the cops, they will promise to use it responsibly, then not merely violate the trust you put in them, but pull its pants down and gang-rape it 'til it bleeds".
There has never once, not ever, been a time when this has not been true. Legalize drugs...all drugs...and fire about half of every police force and letter agency right on the spot.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Who's going to jail? Are the people arrested getting out of jail? What steps will they take to prevent this? What law will be amended so that it is absolutely clear this is not tolerated?
Twinstiq, game news
So Ye Lovers of Justice... when are people going to jail for the egregious violation of the law? Why are you law and order types not baying for the heads of these law breakers?
Don't try to get smart here, as a former president said: "either you are with the children or you are against the children!" (or something like that ;-)
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Clinton is a square shooter. Liberals don't break the law. Clinton 2016
I don't like to think this way, because I'm sure most who participated probably believed they were doing thrift thing. But so did many nazis, etc.
If what was done was procedurally wrong, then administrative action is called for. If it was illegal, then legal action is called for. People who have the ability to make these kinds of decisions should be held to the letter of the law.
In every case possible.
I'm not going to RTFA. So, can anybody who has try to explain why a program if it's probably illegal isn't stopped but is only, "scaled back?"