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.'"
Big buck from prohibition (Score:5, Insightful)
And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
Another word game (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
No. You can only do that once it's too late to matter.
Re:News? (Score:3, Insightful)
"I have never heard of anything like this at all," said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.
"That's outrageous," said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. "It strikes me as indefensible."
"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"
I suspected (or knew) most of what Snodden leaked. I did not knew the DEA was lying at trials and withholding evidence from pretrial discovery. That's different from taps, which everyone knows they can do with a warrant.
move along (Score:5, Insightful)
nothing to see here... only criminals are affected, you are not a criminal, Citizen, are you?
Re:Another word game (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:move along (Score:5, Insightful)
'Recreate'? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:And so it begins (Score:4, Insightful)
Thank God for Obama (Score:2, Insightful)
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
Re:Another word game (Score:5, Insightful)
"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:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Idiots (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Obligatory Casablanka quote (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:And so it begins (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
"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.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:2, Insightful)
And then attacked the officers fist with your jaw.
Ah yes, the Zimmerman style of fighting. Attack your opponent's fist with your face.
This just in: police lie. News at 11. (Score:4, Insightful)
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."
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
You ALWAYS go to fucking TRIAL! Always! These trumped up prosecutions would stop if everyone exercised their right to a TRIAL!
My wife was accused of criminal negligence with regards to an accident involving a retarded minor. She was facing 6 years in PMITV prison!
Well, three days before jury selection was scheduled to start -- they offered a new plea deal, this time with a misdemeanor charge and 1 year of probation. Called their fucking bluffs!
PS: If I had the money for a trial, we would have said no and got the charges dropped completely
Didn't you just demonstrate exactly why many people *don't* go to trial (including yourself?) The government holds all the cards - not only can they can hold a max sentence prosecution over your head making the stakes too high to gamble, but they *also* can play dirty with the evidence and stack the deck in their favor making it more likely that they will win. And since they are prosecuting with your tax dollars, they get unlimited funds to spend on the prosecution.
It's easy to say "Everyone should go to trial!" but when it's your (or your wife's) butt on the line, it's not so easy to face years of prison time -- as you so clearly demonstrated with your story. You didn't call their bluff - they called yours - they sweetened the pot on the plea deal because they wanted you to admit to the crime so they get yet another successful prosecution - and you did exactly what they wanted.
Mistrial? (Score:4, Insightful)
I admit, IANAL, but doesn't this give grounds for any convicted drug felon to try for a retroactive mistrial?
Re:move along (Score:3, Insightful)
I've broken a few laws, like traffic and copyright. But those aren't criminal laws.
Bully for you, but you're probably wrong. You've probably been guilty of criminal violations without even realizing it.
Meanwhile, both the current and previous president have admitted to violating criminal drug laws. This seems to be accepted as part of growing up at any time during the last 40 or 50 years. I'd accept it as such too, if it wasn't for the bizarre and extreme hypocrisy of continuing to prosecute people for the same laws that they broke.
Re:move along (Score:4, Insightful)
The year was 2002, in June.
I was currently attending the University of Arizona, where I permanently lived for the better part of 2 years, but at this moment I was visiting my family in a suburb of south Houston (Pearland).
I decided to go to my old church. Surprise, they had moved in the last year that I had been there. In the age before Google Maps, mapquest often got directions horribly wrong, particularly for newly moved businesses. When I tried finding my church, I realized the directions were wrong and made a U-Turn when there were no other cars on a 4 lane street about 2 blocks from the intersection.
Then I started seeing all these cop cars. They were just everywhere. Then one of them turned on his lights and pulled me over. He said I had illegally made a U-Turn and asked to see my drivers' license. I gave it to him and he gave me a ticket. I was upset, but o well, right? I already knew we lived in a tyranical system since 9/11/2001 just about 9 months previously (I was pretty much one of the first Truthers; I hosted loosechange911.com for Dylan Avery from 2004-2006, for instance).
When I got home, I realized, oh my gosh, my Arizona drivers license is missing. Working on a hunch, I called the police station of the small town of ~1,500 i had gotten the ticket.
"Oh! Mister [redacted]! Officer Martinez said that he accidentally took your license. He says just come on by anytime tomorrow [Monday] and get it."
OK, so I was a 20 year-old naive kid. I drove by myself to the police station to, you know, get my license. This drive took about 30 minutes.
In the parking lot of the police station / courthouse / jail of the tiny town, I had JUST turned off the ignition of my Xterra when ...
--Knock knock knoc-- on my window.
Startled, I *jumped* and saw Officer Martinez knocking on my car window. He had been waiting for me and had rushed outside. I thought, man, he must really want to give me my driver's license!
"GET OUT OF THE CAR, PUT YOUR HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK! YOU'RE UNDER ARREST!"
Um, what?! My consciousness went into near panic. WHAT COULD I HAVE POSSIBLY DONE?! I was a good Christian-ish boy (really a scientific spiritualist who didn't believe in Jesus, but you get the point), who had never done drugs, or even gotten drunk or even tasted alcohol (I was still 21). I had never done ANYTHING except a few MP3 downloads illegal.
I got out.
"[my full name] You are under arrest for driving with a suspended Texas drivers license."
I turned to Officer Martinez and said, "Well, it's great for you to tell me to drive here. Very convenient. And of course my Texas license expired, I've been living in Arizona for the last two years."
"Take it to the judge!" he bellowed, and marched me inside for processing.
An eternity later (my first time in jail), I was marched in front of the DA and the judge. I had been allowed to make one phone call. I knew my parents' were in California on a vacation so I called my brother but he didn't answer so I left a message about my situation, and that's all they'd let me do. I was not allowed to contact an attorney, they said they'd provide one...later.
I explained myself to a seemingly nice judge in his mid-70s, who really seemed to listen to my side of the story and give me the benefit of the doubt:
1. I was a full-time student in Arizona, where I lived and worked continuously.
2. I was visiting my birth city in Texas and had only been there 5 days and was leaving in about another week.
3. I had a Texas license, but it expired one year ago and I didn't renew becuase, well, I had a perfectly valid Arizona license that didn't expire until 2036, so why renew my texas, right?
The judge seemed very confused. He called over the District Attorney and repeated verbatim what I had said. He then asked the DA, outright:
"If he has a perfectly valid Arizona license and no warrants for his arrest, how can we hold him for an invalid Texas license? The Arizona DM
Re:Thank God for Obama (Score:2, Insightful)
I have to love how the partisan wingnuts jump right in.
This thing is this is not a partisan issue. The program started in 1994.
It's a problem with overreach and arrogance that infects the entire government of the United States. You aren't going to fix it by voting for Democrats or Republicans.
Re:then it's up to the jury to rule the consitutio (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
Any physicist can tell you that "being invisible" is no defence against a sniper's bullet.
The problem here is, the entire "Parallel construction" is being used to hide the fact that the tree was poisoned. In fact, there is no reason to have parellel construction otherwise, since it actually adds nothing to the case: If you had enough evidence to pull him over and search him, then you don't need to wait for him to "drive erratically". If you didn't, then it doesn't give you any.
There is no other purpose here than to hide the poisoning of the tree so that it cannot be defended against.
Joking about serious things? (Score:5, Insightful)
The U.S. government is EXTREMELY CORRUPT. This is no time for joking.
In some ways the U.S. government is the most violent that has ever existed. The U.S. government has invaded more countries than any other country in the history of the world. The U.S. government has more than 760 military bases worldwide [alternet.org]. Taxpayers pay, but aren't allowed to know where there money goes.
Read the story about the US government's purchases of over one billion rounds of anti-personnel ammunition. [naturalnews.com] Quote: "The ammunition is to be use domestically, not by the military."
Do you think it won't get worse?
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
How is that "parallel construction?" Your observations established probable cause for the raid. That was linear construction.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
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".
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
You didn't call their bluff - they called yours - they sweetened the pot on the plea deal because they wanted you to admit to the crime so they get yet another successful prosecution ...
Which is *all* prosecutors really care about - winning not truth. Only winning convictions helps their careers. Sad but, from my experience, true.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:2, Insightful)
The correct spelling is USSA.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:4, Insightful)
...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.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:4, Insightful)
It is however true that you can get a better plea deal by threatening to go to trial, especially if the prosecutor has to work it's ass off to get a conviction. It's a gambit, but if your lawyer feels they have a weak case, they may not be willing to spend hours and hours of their time to get a meaningless (to them) conviction. The legal system's always been a circus where if you show them you're hard to get they'll be a lot more wary. The alternative is they'll destroy your life without remorse.
Re:move along (Score:3, Insightful)
If you hadn't been tailgating ("the practice of driving on a road too close to a frontward vehicle, at a distance which does not guarantee that stopping to avoid collision is possible [wikipedia.org]"), you wouldn't have had to swerve.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:4, Insightful)
> I don't think that I dare hope for a setup that cute, though.
What do you think the entire DEA is for ?
All the DEA does is cut down the competition so the price rises and the CIA can get more money for their off book black ops. You don't really think those drugs get smuggled without help, now, do you?
Re:Joking about serious things? (Score:5, Insightful)
In some ways the U.S. government is the most violent that has ever existed.
I am not a fan of US foreign policy either, but these sorts of exaggerations are just ridiculous. Is the US government really more violent than the Roman Empire or the government of Genghis Khan? In the middle ages you were 35 times as likely to die as a result of violence from another human being (murder, war, etc) than today.
The US may be a violent (or maybe even the most violent) nation by today's standards, but it is certainly not anywhere close to being the most violent that ever existed. This is a gross overstatement.
Re:Troubling quote from the article (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Joking about serious things? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes.
Aircraft with human pilots are generally large and expensive units. Pilots are also very expensive too. These expense issues are what keeps multiple planes from flying around at all times spying on us.
Re:move along (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, I believed you up until here.
If you know anything about driving heavy vehicles you know that they dont just drop 45 KPH in an instant. Trucks are naturally slow to stop to avoid the rear wheels going faster than the front wheels (commonly called drifting and with a vehicle that is 8 metres long, drifting is very, very, fucking bad) and a good truck driver will avoid braking sharply to protect his load.
So a car will be able to brake faster than a truck.
After that is out of the way, in my country you would have broken the law by travelling so close to the vehicle in front that you were unable to stop without hitting the other vehicle when they braked in an emergency (Legal wording here [austlii.edu.au]). Keeping a minimum safe distance is not just law here in Australia, it's a good defensive driving technique anywhere. For the average vehicle, 2-3 seconds is the minimum safe distance, for a truck it's longer (6 seconds min) as they take longer to stop and it keeps you out of a trucks absolutely massive blind spot.
So yes, this is your fault and could have been avoided by following the proper defensive driving technique of maintaining a safe distance.
You haven't managed to prove a police state, you've just inadvertently revealed that you're a bad driver.