8 ms·

What We Learned About the Hemisphere Program After Suing the DEA

195 points by DiabloD3 8y ago

flareback 8y ago
Am I missing something or is the program still on going? It seems like the article is about them getting access to information, not getting the program shut down. Don't get me wrong, I think exposing it is a good first step but getting it stopped where they can't just search for whatever they want without a warrant would be the end goal here.
- boomboomsubban 8y ago
  You're correct, this is about a freedom of information lawsuit about the program. They now seem to be finding potential victims so they can challenge the actual program.
  - flareback 8y ago
    I hope they find someone
- macspoofing 8y ago
  >Am I missing something or is the program still on going? Why wouldn't it? It was ALWAYS a legal program run by the Executive Branch sanctioned by Congress with oversight by the Courts and Congressional committees.
apo 8y ago
Six years later, the DEA embraced the secrecy, going so far to keep it out of the DEA’s equivalent of its internal police reports, DEA Form 6, referred to as “6s” in the email below. ... While these tactics were not enough to keep the existence of the program secret, all information indicates that law enforcement continues to hide its use in criminal cases. If you believe that Hemisphere may have been used in your case, please reach out to info@eff.org. Has a criminal case ever been successfully overturned on the basis of parallel construction having been used?
- tanderson92 8y ago
  On the contrary: the Supreme Court has provided an approved way for parallel construction to be laundered into a valid evidentiary tree: by passing it off to a second officer who develops the case on a good-faith basis (see Herring vs. United States[1]). [1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2558737 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2558737
  - devoply 8y ago
    Not as if the first officer can talk to the second officer... US justice system including the supreme court leave much to be desired.
    - loeg 8y ago
      I think that was implied by GP's characterization of the practice as "laundering."
  - jancsika 8y ago
    I don't understand. 1. NSA whispers to DEA that stolen items are in Alice's basement. 2. DEA whispers to officer that stolen items are in Alice's basement. 3. Officer... does what? How is a warrant obtained to search Alice's basement?
    - ataturk 8y ago
      parallel construction? Officer sniffs around until he comes up with the right pretext.
    - XalvinX 8y ago
      They simply fake something "reasonable" to get a warrant, or more likely search without one at all...cops have a lot of latitude in the field. Even easier is pulling over people in cars and "accidentally" finding the stolen items while "looking for weapons" or whatever else. If they want to get you and you aren't a multimillionaire with good attorneys, they can.
steve_gh 8y ago
(UKian): How can they get records without judicial oversight. Why don't they need a warrant?
- CapitalistCartr 8y ago
  Without a warrant, most evidence (with complicated exceptions) can't be admitted into court, but can aid police in solving a case, then using "parallel construction" for court.
  - loeg 8y ago
    While relevant to the topic, I don't think this is responsive to the question. I.e., "why are police allowed to do this at all?" differs from "is it allowed in court?"
    - maemilius 8y ago
      This touches on the idea of "poisoned fruit" or, more specifically, the "fruit of the poisonous tree". To quote Wikipedia: > Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor in the United States used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as well. The idea here being that the data obtained from hemisphere isn't considered "illegal" and, honestly, probably _would_ be permissible in court. The reason it's kept out seems to have more to do with optics than legalities. So, I guess the simplest answer to the question of "why" is "there's nothing stopping them".
      - porlune 8y ago
        I disagree. I think it is kept out because it violates your 4th amendment rights, and if enough judges saw that violation at least one would remember their civic duty.
      - loeg 8y ago
        I understand what OP was talking about, but disagree that dragnet, untargeted, warrant-less searches are legal and permissible in court.
user2426679 8y ago
This is completely off subject, but as a personal rule of thumb, 99% of articles that include the first person, such as "Why I [did xyz]..." or "How we can...", are clickbait. Ime, the best case scenario is Acme Tech Co. "blogging" about "why we used abc codebase," but the reality is that it's simply rehashing well known information in narrative form for the purposes of PR, and worst case scenario is that it's just unoriginal op-ed garbage. See: "We should replace Facebook with personal websites," which is currently trending at #10 for HN, above this OP at #16. EFF is a great organization and can't say that it's surprising to see that this is the first time in a long time to come across an exception to the rule.
- andrei_says_ 8y ago
  Companies need to publish at least one piece per week or they risk dropping out of the public eye / down in search results. Naturally, much of it is fluff.
iooi 8y ago
> We have settled the case, with DEA reimbursing EFF $160,000 in legal fees. A judge has now dismissed the case, pursuant to the terms of a settlement. This was a hard-won victory by our legal team... It's a good time to make end of the year donations: https://supporters.eff.org/donate/year-end-challenge-2018 https://supporters.eff.org/donate/year-end-challenge-2018
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
jammygit 8y ago
How do we stop this 'tide' of surveillance? Its clearly political. Is it necessary to focus on educating kids so they can create a green revolution for privacy in 20+ years? Or is there a faster way to raise the public concern?
- fjp 8y ago
  I think we're totally fucked. I'm young and my friends are generally smart and tech-savvy and they pretty much all have the "I have nothing to hide" mentality or "if the government really wanted to they could get it anyway".
Dowwie 8y ago
The icing effect around these topics is chilling
orthogonalconst 8y ago
reminder: current FBI directory Christopher Wray invented Parallel Construction back in 2005. In 2005, Wray was then the head of DOJ's Criminal Division, and Wray was the 17th person in the entire Govt outside of NSA to be "read into the program" and briefed on Bush's President's Surveillance Program, now known as NSA's STELLARWIND program. Wray's job was to lead a DOJ team of attorneys and to scrub criminal and terrorism indictments of any hint of evidence which originated in the NSA's then illegal domestic surveillance dragnet, and replace that evidence with Parallel Constructions to deceive the Court about how the Govt knew what it knew. The declassified IG report about STELLARWIND is here: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/PSP-09-18-15-vol-III.pdf https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/PSP-09-18-15-vol-III.pd... The 8 pages which mention Wray and describe his role in creating the practice of Parallel Construction are here: http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8v.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8v.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7o.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7o.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7p.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7p.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7q.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7q.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7t.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7t.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8x.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8x.png Given Wray's intimate involvement in Parallel Construction, I have zero hope that any help is coming from the very top of FBI/DOJ to shed light on what is going on, how much the Feds are really using Parallel Construction, how far they are going with it, and most importantly, giving us some kind of proof that they have stopped abusing it and bowing to some kind of real oversight process to ensure us that our entire legal system is not a Star Chamber in a Soviet Kangaroo Court on Clownworld. Why would Wray budge one inch when he's the top honcho responsible for the whole debacle? The buck stops at him. And given the Fed's dismal track record, it's safest to assume Parallel Construction has not stopped, but has expanded and been rolled out even further. HEMISPHERE is the AT&T dimension of Parallel Construction, so what about the Verizon dimension? And the Sprint dimension? And all the rest of the Telcos and cellular providers? Is AT&T special and only their databases are used for PC? Of course all the telcos are in on it. Wanna bet this is all a sub-compartment of PRISM? We still haven't seen the rest of the PRISM slides leaked by Snowden. On the slide deck it shows the slide numbers up into the hundreds, but only about a dozen of the slides have been published. Where's the rest of it? https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1522617577597.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1522617577597.jpg

195 points by DiabloD3 8y ago

Am I missing something or is the program still on going? It seems like the article is about them getting access to information, not getting the program shut down. Don't get me wrong, I think exposing it is a good first step but getting it stopped where they can't just search for whatever they want without a warrant would be the end goal here.

boomboomsubban 8y ago
You're correct, this is about a freedom of information lawsuit about the program. They now seem to be finding potential victims so they can challenge the actual program.
- flareback 8y ago
  I hope they find someone
macspoofing 8y ago
>Am I missing something or is the program still on going? Why wouldn't it? It was ALWAYS a legal program run by the Executive Branch sanctioned by Congress with oversight by the Courts and Congressional committees.

apo 8y ago

Six years later, the DEA embraced the secrecy, going so far to keep it out of the DEA’s equivalent of its internal police reports, DEA Form 6, referred to as “6s” in the email below. ... While these tactics were not enough to keep the existence of the program secret, all information indicates that law enforcement continues to hide its use in criminal cases. If you believe that Hemisphere may have been used in your case, please reach out to info@eff.org. Has a criminal case ever been successfully overturned on the basis of parallel construction having been used?

tanderson92 8y ago
On the contrary: the Supreme Court has provided an approved way for parallel construction to be laundered into a valid evidentiary tree: by passing it off to a second officer who develops the case on a good-faith basis (see Herring vs. United States[1]). [1]: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2558737 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2558737
- devoply 8y ago
  Not as if the first officer can talk to the second officer... US justice system including the supreme court leave much to be desired.
  - loeg 8y ago
    I think that was implied by GP's characterization of the practice as "laundering."
- jancsika 8y ago
  I don't understand. 1. NSA whispers to DEA that stolen items are in Alice's basement. 2. DEA whispers to officer that stolen items are in Alice's basement. 3. Officer... does what? How is a warrant obtained to search Alice's basement?
  - ataturk 8y ago
    parallel construction? Officer sniffs around until he comes up with the right pretext.
  - XalvinX 8y ago
    They simply fake something "reasonable" to get a warrant, or more likely search without one at all...cops have a lot of latitude in the field. Even easier is pulling over people in cars and "accidentally" finding the stolen items while "looking for weapons" or whatever else. If they want to get you and you aren't a multimillionaire with good attorneys, they can.

steve_gh 8y ago

(UKian): How can they get records without judicial oversight. Why don't they need a warrant?

CapitalistCartr 8y ago
Without a warrant, most evidence (with complicated exceptions) can't be admitted into court, but can aid police in solving a case, then using "parallel construction" for court.
- loeg 8y ago
  While relevant to the topic, I don't think this is responsive to the question. I.e., "why are police allowed to do this at all?" differs from "is it allowed in court?"
  - maemilius 8y ago
    This touches on the idea of "poisoned fruit" or, more specifically, the "fruit of the poisonous tree". To quote Wikipedia: > Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor in the United States used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally. The logic of the terminology is that if the source (the "tree") of the evidence or evidence itself is tainted, then anything gained (the "fruit") from it is tainted as well. The idea here being that the data obtained from hemisphere isn't considered "illegal" and, honestly, probably _would_ be permissible in court. The reason it's kept out seems to have more to do with optics than legalities. So, I guess the simplest answer to the question of "why" is "there's nothing stopping them".
    - porlune 8y ago
      I disagree. I think it is kept out because it violates your 4th amendment rights, and if enough judges saw that violation at least one would remember their civic duty.
    - loeg 8y ago
      I understand what OP was talking about, but disagree that dragnet, untargeted, warrant-less searches are legal and permissible in court.

user2426679 8y ago

This is completely off subject, but as a personal rule of thumb, 99% of articles that include the first person, such as "Why I [did xyz]..." or "How we can...", are clickbait. Ime, the best case scenario is Acme Tech Co. "blogging" about "why we used abc codebase," but the reality is that it's simply rehashing well known information in narrative form for the purposes of PR, and worst case scenario is that it's just unoriginal op-ed garbage. See: "We should replace Facebook with personal websites," which is currently trending at #10 for HN, above this OP at #16. EFF is a great organization and can't say that it's surprising to see that this is the first time in a long time to come across an exception to the rule.

andrei_says_ 8y ago
Companies need to publish at least one piece per week or they risk dropping out of the public eye / down in search results. Naturally, much of it is fluff.

iooi 8y ago

> We have settled the case, with DEA reimbursing EFF $160,000 in legal fees. A judge has now dismissed the case, pursuant to the terms of a settlement. This was a hard-won victory by our legal team... It's a good time to make end of the year donations: https://supporters.eff.org/donate/year-end-challenge-2018 https://supporters.eff.org/donate/year-end-challenge-2018

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

jammygit 8y ago

How do we stop this 'tide' of surveillance? Its clearly political. Is it necessary to focus on educating kids so they can create a green revolution for privacy in 20+ years? Or is there a faster way to raise the public concern?

fjp 8y ago
I think we're totally fucked. I'm young and my friends are generally smart and tech-savvy and they pretty much all have the "I have nothing to hide" mentality or "if the government really wanted to they could get it anyway".

Dowwie 8y ago

The icing effect around these topics is chilling

orthogonalconst 8y ago

reminder: current FBI directory Christopher Wray invented Parallel Construction back in 2005. In 2005, Wray was then the head of DOJ's Criminal Division, and Wray was the 17th person in the entire Govt outside of NSA to be "read into the program" and briefed on Bush's President's Surveillance Program, now known as NSA's STELLARWIND program. Wray's job was to lead a DOJ team of attorneys and to scrub criminal and terrorism indictments of any hint of evidence which originated in the NSA's then illegal domestic surveillance dragnet, and replace that evidence with Parallel Constructions to deceive the Court about how the Govt knew what it knew. The declassified IG report about STELLARWIND is here: https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/PSP-09-18-15-vol-III.pdf https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2015/PSP-09-18-15-vol-III.pd... The 8 pages which mention Wray and describe his role in creating the practice of Parallel Construction are here: http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8v.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8v.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7o.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7o.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7p.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7p.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7q.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7q.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7r.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7t.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n7t.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8x.png http://i.magaimg.net/img/2n8x.png Given Wray's intimate involvement in Parallel Construction, I have zero hope that any help is coming from the very top of FBI/DOJ to shed light on what is going on, how much the Feds are really using Parallel Construction, how far they are going with it, and most importantly, giving us some kind of proof that they have stopped abusing it and bowing to some kind of real oversight process to ensure us that our entire legal system is not a Star Chamber in a Soviet Kangaroo Court on Clownworld. Why would Wray budge one inch when he's the top honcho responsible for the whole debacle? The buck stops at him. And given the Fed's dismal track record, it's safest to assume Parallel Construction has not stopped, but has expanded and been rolled out even further. HEMISPHERE is the AT&T dimension of Parallel Construction, so what about the Verizon dimension? And the Sprint dimension? And all the rest of the Telcos and cellular providers? Is AT&T special and only their databases are used for PC? Of course all the telcos are in on it. Wanna bet this is all a sub-compartment of PRISM? We still haven't seen the rest of the PRISM slides leaked by Snowden. On the slide deck it shows the slide numbers up into the hundreds, but only about a dozen of the slides have been published. Where's the rest of it? https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1522617577597.jpg https://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1522617577597.jpg