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United States Crime Government Privacy

DEA Program "More Troubling" Than NSA 432

Rambo Tribble writes "Reuters is reporting on a secret effort by the Drug Enforcement Agency to collect data from wiretaps, informants, and other sources. Considered most troubling is a systematic campaign to hide this program from the courts, denying defendants their right to know how evidence against them was obtained. This agenda targets U.S. citizens directly, as it is mainly focused on drug trafficking. From the article: 'Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges. The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to "recreate" the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant's Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.'"
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DEA Program "More Troubling" Than NSA

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  • by TheNastyInThePasty ( 2382648 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:31PM (#44478807)

    A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said. After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."

    Country without a consitution says what?

    • Sounds like a way of having to get one of those bothersome warrants.

      • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:03PM (#44479167) Journal

        Sounds like a way of having to get one of those bothersome warrants.

        Even better, if the original collection mechanism was illegal, you can avoid having the evidence excluded as 'fruit of the poisonous tree' by producing a "parallel construction", that isn't illegal, for how you came to possess it! Such convenience.

        • by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:40PM (#44479529)

          Sounds like a way of [not] having to get one of those bothersome warrants.

          Even better, if the original collection mechanism was illegal, you can avoid having the evidence excluded as 'fruit of the poisonous tree' by producing a "parallel construction", that isn't illegal, for how you came to possess it! Such convenience.

          Which, interestingly, is how military intelligence hides their sources. Supposedly during WWII the Allies never took action on information derived from ULTRA, unless they could find other evidence once they knew the fact. That way the Germans could always conclude that the Allies figured things out by normal means, rather than having an ear in their HQs.

          Makes you wonder who the DEA is getting advice from.

      • Looks like I left a 'not' out of that sentence.

    • by colfer ( 619105 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:48PM (#44479003)

      Even more troubling: '"Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day," one official said. "It's decades old, a bedrock concept."... Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using "parallel construction" may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.'

      So it's been accepted practice for decades, with or without the NSA, and yet only drug defense lawyers have ever heard of it. A lot of questions reporters could ask: can defense attorneys get the whole meta-data drop for the phone numbers involved? Can civil case parties get any of this stuff?

      The defense data dump would seem to be especially on point, since it would allow the defendant to point fingers in other directions.

      Choice parts at the end of the article: 'If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement... Current and former federal agents said SOD tips aren't always helpful - one estimated their accuracy at 60 percent.... "It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."' That last comment is the absolutely most corrupt.

      • by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:50PM (#44479039) Journal

        The 'war on drugs' has either introduced or popularized many of the more...unpleasant...police practices, so it isn't 100% surprising that people who litigate drug cases, one side or the other, probably have a lot of unpleasant cocktail party stories.

      • by FuzzNugget ( 2840687 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:20PM (#44479337)
        Right, so: Don't Talk to the Police and Don't Waive Your Right to Trial.
      • by PRMan ( 959735 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:14PM (#44479813)

        At a previous place I lived, the neighbors across the alley had cars pulling up 18 hours a day. Garage door up, guy comes out to window goes back inside comes back out, makes another exchange with driver and driver pulls away. Garage door down. All day, every day.

        It got so bad one day that I couldn't get out and a guy flipped me off. So I called the cops.

        I told them and they said to report it to the complex security guard. I told them that it doesn't work because he's their cousin and the board has been trying to get rid of these people for years (because they suspect the sons go around breaking everything but can't prove it) but legally can't because they know every renter's law up one side and down the other and threaten to sue.

        The cops said, "There isn't anything we can do." I said, sure there is. Send some plainclothes guys to the end of the street. Watch the suspicious transaction. Follow the car out of the complex and pull them over. Search the car for drugs. Once you find the drugs, get a warrant to search the house. Make sure you don't tell the complex security at any time or they'll be notified.

        Sure enough, a couple days later I see a Mercury at the end of the street with 2 obvious plainclothes in it. Clueless druggies roll up and purchase anyway. The next morning, there's a raid and the sons are arrested. Within a month the parents move out and we get a nice, new neighbor.

        Now, based on this thread, we engaged in "parallel construction". I just saw suspicious activity and we manufactured the rest (but it was all legit). (I didn't realize I was so clever.)

        So it's not the parallel construction that's the problem. It's the massive dragnet to find the information to begin with.

        Also, what happens when someone tries to frame someone else by texting them from different people's phones and asking them where to find drugs. Will the cops "plant" drugs because they've already expended the effort?

        • by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:24PM (#44479909) Journal

          How is that "parallel construction?" Your observations established probable cause for the raid. That was linear construction.

          • Police and private citizens have different rules. So if the police break in your house, without a warrant, and find evidence of a crime, well sorry that evidence, and anything resulting from it, can't be used. They didn't follow the law. Likewise if the police pay (or force, or ask, or whatever) someone to break in to your house and that person finds evidence of a crime, it again can't be used. While the person wasn't a cop, he acted as their agent.

            However, if someone breaks in to their house all on their o

          • Now, based on this thread, we engaged in "parallel construction". I just saw suspicious activity and we manufactured the rest (but it was all legit). (I didn't realize I was so clever.)

            So it's not the parallel construction that's the problem. It's the massive dragnet to find the information to begin with.

            How is that "parallel construction?" Your observations established probable cause for the raid. That was linear construction.

            It's not. Parallel construction would have been an undercover cop from a differ

        • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:26PM (#44479933)

          The cops said, "There isn't anything we can do." I said, sure there is. [ ... explains to Cops how to do their fucking job ...]

          This is even sadder than the time a junior programmer, just out of college, asked me, "how do I debug a program".

        • by TheCarp ( 96830 ) <sjc@[ ]panet.net ['car' in gap]> on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:54PM (#44480165) Homepage

          ...and shortly thereafter all the "druggies" found new suppliers, the can was kicked down to some other neighborhood, addiction rates didn't change, since they never really do more than the yearly fluctuations.

          All because the real problem wasn't them, it was the government and police who created the situation where opening up a storefront in a residential garage looked like a good and profitable idea.

        • by TsuruchiBrian ( 2731979 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @05:07PM (#44481309)

          Did these "druggies" actually hurt anybody? I mean besides flipping you off and blocking you in your driveway. It seems that you just didn't like them, and they happened to be a minor inconvenience (not unlike someone playing loud music or just being an asshole), and what they were doing happened to be illegal and you took advantage of that.

          I would say in an ideal world we would end the war on drugs, rather than manufacturing reasons to make criminals out of people that aren't hurting anyone (except maybe themselves), and in the process funneling money to brutal drug cartels.

          I don't think you were wrong to call the cops on them. I wouldn't want a bunch of drug deals going down where I lived either, but I think the real problem is that because it's illegal, it attracts a criminal element, and not the other way around.

    • by icebike ( 68054 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:49PM (#44479015)

      Constructing a case against someone that you *cough* accidentally discovered was doing something wrong via an illegal wiretap or massive surveillance is almost an everyday occurrence in this country. Everyone from the tin-star country sheriff to the biggest police department does it.

      This is why license plate scanners, mass email sifting, etc ad-nauseum is so insidious EVEN for people who do nothing wrong, except drive down the wrong street at the wrong time, or post on the wrong threads (like this one) on a public forum.

      You can be made do look guilty enough to be detained, your reputation for ever ruined, or actual arrested and prosecuted and convicted by un-questioning juries who simply want to go home.

      The wisest thing is for any defense attorney to do is to ask direct questions as to why this particular car was stopped on this particular day, or why that particular hoodie was a target of stop and risk. That forces the police and prosecutors to either fabricate a lie, or reveal these retro-investigations.

      Will it have any immediate effect? I sincerely doubt it. But you catch them at it once, and you can taint a lot of cases.

      One wonders if license plate scanners aren't really a huge scam to provide a vaguely dependable program for acquiring a pretense of probable cause. Looking for stolen vehicles, but only in the areas where drug sales or prostitutes are plentiful.

      • by EmagGeek ( 574360 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:26PM (#44479397) Journal

        "The wisest thing is for any defense attorney to do is to ask direct questions as to why this particular car was stopped on this particular day"

        "The driver $misc_innocuous_driving_offense, so I stopped him. When I approached the car, I thought I smelled marijuana, so I called a drug sniffing dog, which indicated there were drugs in the car"

        This line of "construction" is accepted 100% of the time in 100% of the courts in the US.

      • Police are experts at fabricating lies

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:35PM (#44479463)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • by lgw ( 121541 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:49PM (#44480127) Journal

        I'd say that every problem I have with the government could be described as "government excess". In pretty much every case it's "while I like that you're doing X, I'd like it more if you did it a bit less". While the seemingly-inevitable entitlement collapse will bring lots of unpleasant civil unrest, there's at least a chance that the funding for all the three letter agencies will be cut to the point they're forced to focus on the stuff that actually helps. Of course, I guess it's more likely that everything else will be cut and only the police state will remain funded to suppress insurrection, but hey, a man can hope.

    • then it's up to the jury to rule the constitutional way

  • by Sponge Bath ( 413667 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:31PM (#44478811)
    Has the money made by the prohibition industry exceeded that made by drug king pins yet? This is the kind of unchecked power that the cartels would love to have.
  • And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)

    by NobleSavage ( 582615 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:32PM (#44478827)
    Can we use the word police state yet?
    • by Ben Dibell ( 2852113 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:36PM (#44478873)
      That's two words.
    • by Endo13 ( 1000782 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:36PM (#44478889)

      No. You can only do that once it's too late to matter.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:49PM (#44479013)

      It's not really a classic police state yet, which is top down.

      This is something new, where we have shards of government becoming autonomous and headless and immune from oversight. The idea of checks and balances is failing. The DEA and the NSA are now their own organizations with their own agenda, their own budgets, their own corrupt private contractors, their own interests to serve. They exist for that, and not to serve the public.

      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:09PM (#44479229)

        It's not really a classic police state yet, which is top down.

        The record holder in perjury before congress so far is not some NSA official but Eric Holder, the Attorney General, responsible for prosecuting things like high-level perjury.

        If that's not top down, I don't know what is.

    • by Jeff Flanagan ( 2981883 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:52PM (#44479067)
      Begins? When it comes to drug prohibition, we've been able to honestly say that for decades. That's part of the reason I find the Republicans so disingenuous. It's insane (or an outright lie) to claim that our freedoms have been recently taken with Obama in office, when they were taken by Nixon and perpetuated by every president since. Not only does our authoritarian government lock up people for using a less-harmful alternative to alcohol, they've used their power to push prohibition world-wide.
      • by mi ( 197448 ) <slashdot-2017q4@virtual-estates.net> on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:18PM (#44479317) Homepage Journal
        Was it really Nixon, who presided over the original Prohibition?

        As for Obama, he surely inherited some of the problems, but — instead of alleviating them — made them worse. For the most obvious example, Obama is killing [theguardian.com] the people Bush used to try to capture... Is the Nobel Peace Prize winner really that blood-thirsty? No, he is not. But, to be able to close Guantanamo eventually, he has to stop putting new people there... And his supporters, so worked-up about people being locked-up in Gitmo, are happily ignoring his killing of the same alleged terrorists. If he thought, he could get away with simply executing all of the current detainees — so as to close the "illegal" prison down, he would've done that too...

        • Was it really Nixon, who presided over the original Prohibition?

          The original Prohibition was repealed in 1933, as I'm sure you know. The GP was referring to Nixon's "War on Drugs". In reality I wouldn't place the blame squarely on Tricky Dick. He was just the first to use, or popularize, the term. He's also one of our most hateable presidents. But yes, the war on drugs started before Nixon and has been continued long after he resigned.

        • He didn't say original prohibition. He said drug prohibition. That was Nixon. Well, not really - the drugs were already illegal. He just declared war (well, not really - only congress can do that [argument for another day]).
          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs [wikipedia.org]

        • Nixon coined the phrase "War on Drugs."

          The substances were prohibited long before. During his time, though is when we started to see the use of no-knock warrants, which has been the signature tool in drug enforcement.

          American Law Enforcement: Putting the boot to your door (warranted or not, correct door or not) since the early '70s.

  • Another word game (Score:5, Insightful)

    by qbast ( 1265706 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:35PM (#44478861)
    This "recreating the investigative trail" sounds like a fancy way to describe perjury.
    • by hooweek ( 3007743 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:42PM (#44478939)

      This "recreating the investigative trail" sounds like a fancy way to describe perjury.

      I just don't see how it's acceptable for the government to use this "parallel construction" and not recognize the implications. Basically, you can spy on people / utilize information swept up from other (likely dubious) government actions as long as you can fabricate reasonable cause after the fact? How is the entire investigation not completely tainted by this fact? Not only that, but now you get to get rhetorical ammunition that "spying works" since it can lead to convictions outside of the intended purpose while simultaneously reducing the information available to regular citizens and the attorneys that defend them since it's literally their job to cover it up after the fact with a false trail.

      • by achbed ( 97139 ) <sd@nOsPAm.achbed.org> on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:00PM (#44479133) Homepage Journal

        "Parallel construction" is apparently the technical term for laundering the fruit of the poisonous tree. If the way the original tip was gathered was illegal, then ALL subsequent evidence gathered is inadmissible. Period. By laundering the source of the investigation (to hide the illegal tip), the FBI, DA's office, local and state cops are all committing both perjury and possible contempt of court.

        Good luck getting the judges to do anything about it though. The only way this will be stopped is if the FBI is sued by a drug dealer or trafficker. And they have a GREAT history of winning in court.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      This "recreating the investigative trail" sounds like a fancy way to describe perjury.

      The term is 'testilying', citizen.

  • by alen ( 225700 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:35PM (#44478863)

    RTFA, it says the DEA submits requests for money for the program in budget documents and its a well known program for coordinating inter-state and international investigations

    • Do the budget documents describe the abuse? If not, then this is basically secret.

    • RTFA, it says the DEA submits requests for money for the program in budget documents and its a well known program for coordinating inter-state and international investigations

      And yet in the article we find this:

      "It was an amazing tool," said one recently retired federal agent. "Our big fear was that it wouldn't stay secret."

      Seems pretty clear that there were aspects of the program that they really wanted to keep deeply hidden, which is pretty much the definition of secret.

  • Maybe they're so keen to keep the source hidden because it's the NSA and all of their programs?

    Speaking of the NSA, anyone else notice a number of stories over the past few days ( here and elsewhere ) that seem designed to throw attention anywhere but the NSA's crap?

    • by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:38PM (#44478907) Homepage

      The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

      Had I read for just a minute longer, I'd have found this. So it would seem I was correct.

  • move along (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:41PM (#44478929)

    nothing to see here... only criminals are affected, you are not a criminal, Citizen, are you?

    • Re:move along (Score:5, Insightful)

      by buswolley ( 591500 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:44PM (#44478953) Journal
      Actually. We are all criminals. I mean, how many laws are there? Yes, I've said this before. You can't live without breaking laws, there are too many laws. Equality before the law really just means, "on whom is the law enforced?" The poor and the brown...and those that speak uneasy truths.
      • Wait until you say something that pisses off the DIP, Dictator in Power.

        Then they will look for any and everything you do to find a reason to take you down. Didn't pay all your license fees, you took a deduction you didn't justify, you claimed something that wasn't right on a government form, or maybe you didn't reply to a government request. You are a criminal.

        Worse yet, they have unlimited funds to take you down, if their SWAT team doesn't find a reason to do it first.

        Boom!

  • Idiots (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:47PM (#44478993)

    If they'd legalize drugs the bottom would fall out of the market and all the drug-funded gangs and their wars would fade away. (Or look for something else illegal to sell.)

    Tax dope as high as you can without creating a black market, and use the revenue for prevention and rehab programs. And use all the money that's currently going to the DEA and prison-industrial complex for something useful.

    • Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hatta ( 162192 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:57PM (#44479105) Journal

      They're not idiots. Lots of very powerful and well connected people profit from drug prohibition. They don't want the bottom to fall out of the market, and they don't want drug-funded gangs to go away. What they are doing is intentional.

      • Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)

        by meta-monkey ( 321000 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:08PM (#44479217) Journal

        Without drug users, who will fill the private prisons? How will the warden feed his kids without your tax dollars? Won't you please, please think of the warden's children?

        Without the drug profits fueling the hyper-violent narco state to our south, from what blood-drenched hellhole will our tomato pickers and day laborers flee? And citizens can't do those jobs, because they would want "wages" and "better working conditions," and you can't deport them near so easily when they get uppity.

        Oh well. Gotta keep spending those tax dollars though. After all, the children and everything...

    • And the banks own the capitol. Check-out HSBC deferred prosecution.

    • Unfortunately all too many people on drugs have no interest in rehab. Not to mention the economics are not so easy. i.e How much revenue per addict do you need to generate per treatment?

      And extreme prevention measures, in the form of making drugs illegal / forcing high prices, hasn't been much of a winner.

      So yes, we can easily end a lot of drug related crime. Except for petty crime by people too messed up to hold a job, but no too messed up to steal from friends, neighbors, family to support their lifest

      • Re:Idiots (Score:5, Informative)

        by h4rr4r ( 612664 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:21PM (#44479345)

        Do you think anyone who has ever used drugs needs rehab?
        Even people who only indulge a few times a year?

        Most drug consumption is not your hard core addict, but normal people have a joint after work, or a couple lines at the club on their birthday. These people don't need help or rehab, they are functioning members of society and prosecuting them hurts us all. Taxing them on the other hand would help pay for the treatments of the hard luck cases.

        Thefts by drug users are due to their inability to get work(thanks drug testing!) and the high price of drugs. Look at what Switzerland did with heroin to see that your theory is likely wrong.

  • 'Recreate'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sjames ( 1099 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @12:47PM (#44478999) Homepage Journal

    Recreating the investigative trail sounds a LOT like fabrication.

    We have DEA agents who swear to "tell the truth, the WHOLE truth, and nothing but the truth" knowingly omitting an important part of the truth.

  • [not dealing with the morality or politics of this, but simply as it relates to hiding information that you use]
    Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon has some good examples of how anyone can conceal information they've discovered. When the Allies in WW II wanted to protect the secret that they could decrypt the German's Enigma traffic, they had to take steps beyond simply not using the information (e.g.: not telling anyone that Coventry was going to be bombed). If you want to use information, without letting any

  • Even after this exposure, there will be a solid core of epically stupid citizens that will be fine with this; sheep that mindlessly graze on network TV and football whilst repeating the mantra 'If you've done nothing wrong...'
  • by Anonymous Coward

    It's a good thing we have Obama in the white house, because this sort of thing would NEVER happen with a Democrat in power /sarcasm

  • (1) plant drugs on enemy (2) use parallel construction to bust him (3) trail back to you is practically erased
    • Re:cover your tracks (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fsterman ( 519061 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:17PM (#44479835) Homepage

      Parent has gotten low scores, but it happens more often than you would think. I personally know someone the FBI tried to plant drugs on because they had not found any on his friends (whom they had already arrested). He saw it in the police car before he got in and refused to do so until they swept it up.

      They just have to pretend to smell marijuana, coerce the drug dog into faking a "hit" or claim there was an anonymous tip [youtube.com] and they can go ape-shit on your house. Granted, I would be willing to be that a majority of the time they are right. But there is a reason why low-income communities hate cops.

      If you want trust 100% of the time, you have to be fair 100% of the time

  • by FuzzNugget ( 2840687 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:33PM (#44479439)

    What people don't seem to understand is that police lie. ALL. THE. TIME. They lie selfishly, indiscriminately and callously. They lie overly and omittingly. They lie to suspects, witnesses, passers-by, judges, and juries. They lie in public and under oath. They lie to deceive, coerce and intimidate.

    And they get away with it. ALL. THE. TIME.

    Go watch the ubiquitous Don't Talk to the Police video. I know you've already watched it. Watch it again. Especially the part where the police officer explicitly states that he and all police officers are "professional liars."

  • Mistrial? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @01:41PM (#44479533) Homepage

    I admit, IANAL, but doesn't this give grounds for any convicted drug felon to try for a retroactive mistrial?

  • by n0ano ( 148272 ) <n0ano@arrl.net> on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:25PM (#44479919) Homepage

    What I find most troubling from the article is this:

    "You'd be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said.

    (Bold emphasis mine.) The casual way that a law enforcement agent advocated violating laws relating to probable cause is astonishing. Subconciously I know that they do this but to actually come out in print and admit it is really sad.

  • by msobkow ( 48369 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @02:29PM (#44479959) Homepage Journal

    Good.

    Maybe now you'll be as upset as we foreigners are about the NSA surveilling us.

  • by Chas ( 5144 ) on Monday August 05, 2013 @04:36PM (#44481077) Homepage Journal

    The fact that ANY of these "letter agencies" are doing it in the first place is more than "troubling".

    After that, it's just a matter of death by degrees.

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