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.

Comments

I'll wait patiently

[WaffleMonster]

For anyone responsible to even see a trial.

--
https://technet.microsoft.com/...

Re:I'll wait patiently

[whoever57]

I find that it is helpful not to wait for things that will never happen.

"...to more routine levels."

[turkeydance]

yeah, it's OK when it's routine. that's what i tell my wife.

Ramp Up Your Rhetoric Game

[mentil]

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

Re:Republicans don't give a damn about the law

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Paul Zellerbach, who instituted the wiretapping is a Republican.

But Mike Hestrin, who ousted him and is currently cleaning up his legacy, including the move to slash the wiretapping, is also a Republican.

So it looks to me like at least some Republicans give some sort of damn about the law.

(Not that I have any love of Republicans. Both major parties attract psychopaths - just different types.)

Re: NOT SO GOOD

[Anonymous Coward]

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 has always led the attack on our rights

[chihowa]

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.

Re:The DEA has always led the attack on our rights

[PopeRatzo]

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.

You can add property seizures without due process to the list, too.

Re:The DEA has always led the attack on our rights

[fnj]

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.

I wouldn't hold my breath. Cannabis was outlawed in many/most states from the mid-1930's until recently - and is still today outlawed in most states. That's 85 years. Federally it was (ludicrously) categorized as a Schedule 1 Substance by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which is still in effect 46 years later. Category 1 is the same category as highly dangerous and addictive opioids and stimulants, as well as powerful psychedelics.

The Prohibition of alcohol only lasted 13 years.

Re:The DEA has always led the attack on our rights

[burtosis]

I wouldn't hold my breath.

That's where you are going wrong. Next time hold your breath for at least a few seconds.

Re:The DEA has always led the attack on our rights

[bmo]

The Prohibition of alcohol only lasted 13 years.

That's because marijuana prohibition was and is explicitly racist by implementation.

Go read the reasons why it was instituted.

"There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others."

âoeReefer makes darkies think they're as good as white men."

--Harry Anslinger, chief of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics

Compare and contrast that the complaint against alcohol prohibition was that "it was done while the boys were off at war" (lobbied for in 1917 as a wartime grain-saving act, and ratified later on "morality" reasons) and that its popularity was so low among whites that there were many loopholes for "medicinal" alcohol (the AMA lobbied to remove all limits on the prescription of whiskey) and home-made wine (you could buy grapes explicitly for the purpose and ferment them yourself).

As long as marijuana prohibition affected "the darkies" more than other people, it was just fine with the American public. Today, the vast majority of people smoking it are white.

--
BMO

Re: NOT SO GOOD

[vux984]

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".

Re:NOT SO GOOD

[wbr1]

Selling or using kills millions?

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.

Parallel construction is the the DEA's game.

[Rujiel]

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.

Re:Parallel construction is the the DEA's game.

[Rujiel]

Prett hard to sever the tail while it wags the dog. Keeping drugs illegal is also the US' way of controlling countries like Mexico from two angles--we force its official leadership to comply in return for weapons and training, and then make arrangements with cartels (like the Sinaloas) in an attempt to shape their black markets as well.

Re:Parallel construction is the the DEA's game.

[rahvin112]

You forget that the CIA makes millions smuggling drugs for the cartels to fund their black ops that congress will not pay for. Where do you think Noreaga got all his drug money and connections?

If drugs weren't illegal where would the CIA get it's slush funds from? Trafficking slaves?

Ignorance of the law is no excuse

[penguinoid]

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?

Re:NOT SO GOOD

[NormalVisual]

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.

Just Say "No"...to the DEA!

[Irate Engineer]

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.

They need to name a new law

[hyades1]

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.