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FBI Told Cops to Recreate Evidence from Secret Cell-Phone Trackers
- devishard 10y agoWhy is this surprising to anyone? It's time to realize that our own law enforcement is a greater threat to us than terrorists abroad. This behavior needs to be made illegal.
- jimrandomh 10y agoIt is already illegal. This behavior needs to be punished.
- tetrep 10y ago> “This is the first time I have seen language this explicit in an FBI non-disclosure agreement,” Nate Wessler, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project...
- programmarchy 10y ago> law enforcement a greater threat > made illegal See a problem here?
- roywiggins 10y agoSurprising, no. Surprising to see it in writing from the FBI? Yeah, a little.
- StanislavPetrov 10y agoThe unfortunate fact is that the FBI doesn't mind putting it in writing because any vestige of justice on our legal system has been swept away. Agents of the government understand that they are completely above the law, so much so that they don't even bother going through the motions anymore to pretend otherwise.
- losteric 10y agoOK, so given that the general populous is now starting to acknowledge this abuse of power... how do we fix it? All three branches of governance are falling outside the public's control and people no longer vote with a long-term and open mind. How do we get people to step down the vitriol and work with each other towards the common good?
- meddlepal 10y agoYou don't and you can't. You accept it and adjust behavior accordingly.
- rhizome 10y agoThe general populace isn't starting to acknowledge the abuse. Some niches are, though, and that's why we even are able to talk about parallel construction in this much detail. It still requires people to read court transcripts and find these nuggets of information about law enforcement practices and policies, after which they tell whoever is listening (typically on Twitter in my experience).
- TaylorAlexander 10y agoThis comment is on every post where something like this is revealed. Yes, we "all" have known that parallel reconstruction has been going on. Except for the skeptics who require hard evidence of its occurrence. Well, now we have evidence. This isn't about the practice being surprising. It's about the practice finally being documented.
- Semiapies 10y agoIt hasn't been "finally" documented, the documentation has been out for almost three years.
- neilk 10y agoYep. "Why is this surprising?" There are reasons to discuss it other than surprise. Better evidence may allow for official reactions, inquiries, or prosecutions. "Is anyone so naive that..." Yes, we weep for our lost innocence. Now we see that your jaded nihilism was justified all along. Forgive us. "Of course, nobody really cares..." Back that up with stats. Are you sure nobody cares? Are you sure that is a permanent state of affairs? If you're also asking "Why is anyone surprised?" that's acknowledging we've got a delta in collective interest here, so the complaint is self-canceling. And how many people's attention is needed? A very vocal and effective 5% of the population can get a lot done. "Of course, nobody can do anything..." Despite various pronouncements of the end of history, things continue to happen.
- themartorana 10y agoJust to your last point, history ends for most of us when we expire. It is hard for me to see, possibly halfway through my life, when or how this course corrects, considering the current balance of money and power.
- darpa_escapee 10y agoI have yet to encounter a person who doesn't keep a pulse on tech / security and also believes parallel construction exists. 95% of Snowden revelations are still in conspiracy theory territory and aren't even Snopes worthy to most.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 10y agoIt's already illegal by any sane interpretation of the law. What does it even mean to make law enforcement behavior "illegal"? Who would enforce it? Obviously those in charge are either happy with it as it is or feel powerless to stop it.
- hawleyal 10y agoIt is illegal.
- chinathrow 10y ago"Privacy advocates have long warned of “parallel construction,” in which investigators cover up information obtained without a warrant by finding other ways to attribute it — never allowing the source of the original lead to be scrutinized or subject to judicial oversight." Get used to it. Or fight it.
- forgetme123 10y agoYet another example of the American police state. Also look at the story the mods decided to bury, man has 20,000 seized from him in yet another civil forfeiture case. mods ban IPs for those who speak out against the government. Don't bother trying to have a real discussion on HN. The mods fully support government control. Look at how they handled the snowden discussion, they "penalize" articles which are critical of the government. Mods also routinely protect government suppoerts, shills, and allow sock puppet accounts to control karma. My account will again be removed. Remember HN is not a place to truly discuss the american police state.
- btrask 10y agoSuggestion: stop calling this "parallel construction" and start calling it evidence laundering.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- evan_ 10y agoWhy not just "fabricating evidence"?
- btrask 10y agoThe whole point is that they are finding real evidence through illegitimate means. If you try to say they are fabricating evidence out of whole cloth, no one will believe you.
- themartorana 10y agoBut they are. It might be OJ's glove, but "we found it in his glove compartment" is a fabrication. It has nothing to do with guilt.
- nevdka 10y agoIn this case, it's like going from "the stingray told us you were in the house" to "we interviewed your neighbors and they say you were in the house". Interviewing neighbors is legitimate and can be used as evidence, but they wouldn't have interviewed them at all if they didn't use the stingray.
- woodman 10y agoThe lie would have to be comprehensive enough to justify conducting interviews in the neighborhood and everything that leads up to it, so even with the best of intentions (stop laughing) - it is very easy to unintentionally fabricate a lot of evidence. There isn't really any need to speculate though, the DEA proudly listed success stories for the "Hemisphere Project" - just look up the public information about those cases and see what lie they used for probable cause.
- woJW1OrH73yE 10y agoIt talks about Kennard Walters as a success case in the link to the hemisphere program. I decided to look this up. Is this the same case? http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/10r51h1ls/california-southern-district-court/usa-v-walters/ http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/10r51h1ls/california-southe... I'm not versed well enough in these things to accurately describe, but it looks like there was a motion for discovery, and the case was effectively dropped a week later?
- programmer1234 10y agoPart of Stallman's motivation for starting the free software movement was that your computer is an extension of your mind, and ubiquitous computer surveillance is basically the same as Orwell's thought police. The chilling effect is real, as demonstrated by a recent study that showed a drop off in terrorism related searches after the Snowden leaks. I freely research terrorism though, because I'm not "the type of person who would do something". So I basically rely on racial, ethnic, and economic discrimination to feel secure about what I search online. I just don't understand how James Comey and the FBI think that they can make us all safer by turning into criminals themselves.
- TaylorAlexander 10y agoIt's hard to say if the drop in terrorism related searches was due to the chilling effect or if people lost interest in the idea of terrorism.
- themartorana 10y agoWhen they think we're all criminals, it's just a matter of degrees and justifications.
- dredmorbius 10y agoOr who they want to catch.
- cmurf 10y agoMust have war to bring peace, etc. I even hear this from anarcho-capitalist who blame the government for everything, in effect to get rid of inherently coercive government violent revolution is probably necessary. What I think is naive is the idea that the only bad kind of coercion is from governments, as if there's no such thing as economic coercion, or psychological coercion. And further is naive that it is possible to totally get rid of it.
- _rknLA 10y agoRelevant: http://www.wnyc.org/story/stingray-conspiracy-theory-daniel-rigmaiden-radiolab/ http://www.wnyc.org/story/stingray-conspiracy-theory-daniel-...
- ikeboy 10y agoHow far does the "fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine go? If someone is caught using illegal evidence, and then let go because of that, can the police follow them around to see if they commit more crimes, or is that all poisoned (because if the original evidence hadn't been obtained, they would never have found this person to follow)? Would they need to wait until the person came up in an entirely unrelated lead? Would they be able to add the information "person was previously let go on technicality for crime X" to a database which generates leads when cross-referencing other data (e.g. people in proximity to a crime, which might be crossed with known criminals? (I don't know if this is actually done))
- greenleafjacob 10y agoThe doctrine is subject to four main exceptions. The tainted evidence is admissible if: > the chain of causation between the illegal action and the tainted evidence is too attenuated; or
- ikeboy 10y agoWhat does that mean practically?
- fiatmoney 10y agoWhatever they want it to.
- ikeboy 10y agoThey is the courts, and the criteria sound like they come from precedent, so I want to know what cases created that precedent to know how it should be interpreted.
- fiatmoney 10y agoYou're missing the point. "Too attenuated" presumably does have case law, as do things like "substantially related to a compelling government interest" or "probable cause". Those have magnificent, overflowing volumes of decisions enumerating whether they apply to particular circumstances. And yet, oddly enough, it works better to reason backwards from the desired conclusion in a particular case to the most convincing reasoning that could support it, than the reverse.
- kelvin0 10y agoIt's awesome to see an episode of 'The Wire' become an actual headline.
- dredmorbius 10y agoMany episodes of The Wire were headlines. Or ought have been. See David Simon's "Audacity of Hope" speech. One version of it at UC Berkeley on YouTube. (Simon's a great writer and has wonderful ideas to express. He's an abysmal public speaker. I actually edited out all the "ums" and "ers" from that, and cut it by 10 minutes (70 minute preso).
- optforfon 10y agoLike it feeeels wrong.. but I can never articulate what the problem is with parallel construction. Can someone give a quick explanation of why?
- drjesusphd 10y agoIt short-circuits the fourth ammendment, which protects against unreasonable searches. The way this is enforced in the real world is that evidence is thrown out of court if it was obtained in an unlawful search. With parallel construction, you render useless the only enforcement mechanism for the fourth ammendment. Not to mention the deception. In order to use parallel construction, the police need to make up a story about why they began investigating. By definition, parallel construction means that they will lie in court about this. The courts really need to wake up, or they will continue to be impotent lackeys of the executive branch.
- optforfon 10y agoRight but the "made up story" has to be legally sound. Like they have to put a police officer at the right place at the right time. How is that a bad thing? Like you can still have information so private that you can't build a parallel construction - right?
- jonathankoren 10y agoThey only put the cop at the right place and at the right time, because they chose the place and time ahead of time. You will never have information that's so secret that you can't build a parallel construction, because you always create a parallel construction that gives the appearance of random chance. "Well, your honor, we decided to setup a traffic safety roadblock stopping every blue car, and when the defendants stopped they started acting suspicious, and then it just happened that a k9 unit that was returning from delivering coffee alerted on the car. At which I point I searched the car and found the evidence. Somedays, we just get lucky."
- 10y ago
- rcthompson 10y agoSuppose that instead of the secret cell phone tracker evidence and the parallel construction, it was an undercover witness and a random bystander witness. Instead of having the undercover officer testify in court and thereby reveal themselves, the cops instead use the undercover witness's information to locate the bystander (e.g. the undercover witness remembered seeing the bystander and gave the police his description to help them find the bystander), and they have the bystander testify in court instead of the undercover witness, and they never say at the trial how they found this witness. Are the police allowed to do this? Should they be? If they are, is it any different from "parallel construction"starting from secret cell phone evidence instead of secret witness testimony? (I'm genuinely curious. I don't know the answers to any of these questions.) Edit: I guess in order to make the analogy more accurate, I would have to specify that the undercover agent knows they did something illegal that would make their own testimony inadmissible as evidence, and this is the motivation for finding the bystander.
- jonathankoren 10y agoI guess you could do that. The key difference between this and the Stingray parallel construction is that the random bystander is a legitimate witness with no connection to the police. Now if the police called up some friend and said, "Hey, I meet me on the corner of blah and blah at noon tomorrow, knowing that a crime was going was going to take place there and then, then that's something else.