8 ms·

DEA teaches agents to recreate evidence chains to hide methods

139 points by morisy 13y ago

higherpurpose 13y ago
This should be extremely illegal and a zero tolerance policy should be in place. Also, I don't think I've heard Obama mention any of this in his recent speech on how to fix the surveillance abuses, and it came out in the news at least twice last year. I think it's time we send a review panel into DEA (and FBI for that matter), too.
- logn 13y ago
  A review panel? If only we had a department that had the power to arrest these people for breaking the law. That would be the DOJ unfortunately.
gregholmberg 13y ago
Parallel construction allows intelligence agencies to make criminal allegations that might turn out to be less than factually accurate, while facing no review and no repercussions. The concept of allowing evidence from secret sources should offend anyone who believes in a just society.
- tptacek 13y ago
  How does parallel construction allow: (i) intelligence agencies to make any criminal allegations (ii) criminal allegations that turn out to be false Can you be as specific as you can? There's plenty of rational arguments to make about why "parallel construction" is bad, but too many people argue about it without understanding at all what it is.
  - DelightfulScone 13y ago
    "but too many people argue about it without understanding at all what it is." Oh tell us then since you have the inside track of knowledge on the issue. You know you are chomping on the bit to do so.
  - glimcat 13y ago
    > criminal allegations that turn out to be false That's not the issue. The problem is that it gives the government the ability to arbitrarily circumvent the usual ethical safeguards and legal protections which come into play when bringing a criminal allegation. Since the practice obfuscates at least part of the evidentiary chain, there's no way for a private citizen's legal defense to audit it for compliance with ethical and legal standards. Also, given sufficient surveillance data and complexity of law, you can probably come up with some criminal charge against any arbitrary person under surveillance at any time when it would be useful to do so. > intelligence agencies to make any criminal allegations "Here's some data, that guy is inconvenient to us, please accuse them of this list of legal violations which we have just given you supporting evidence for." If you know a reason why it wouldn't work like that - one which can still be enforced in open court, not a secret court known for rubber-stamping virtually anything brought before it by the government - I would love to hear it.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      Prosecutors are required to present potentially exculpatory evidence, but they have never been required to present all the data they generate in their investigations. Defendants have never had access to the entire "evidentiary chain" using the definition you present here. Meanwhile: prosecutors "accuse", and to do it, they need evidence. They can't use evidence from NSA or DEA "fusion"; the whole point of "parallel construction" is that they need a chain anchored by probable cause to do anything.
      - rosser 13y ago
        Speaking only for myself, the problem with Parallel Construction, from an "implications for law enforcement" perspective (thus leaving aside your legitimate concerns about warping the NSA's mission) is simply the dishonesty of it. It bakes yet more deceit into a prosecutor's job. I think there's already quite enough of that as things stand, thanks so much.
      - msandford 13y ago
        Yes that's true. But the idea that there's an entity which can "magically" drum up a precise interdiction point where probable cause should be manufactured by law enforcement isn't good. If a police officer wouldn't suspect you of a crime without the special instructions given to him by someone with access to sensitive information then you've just done an end-run around probable cause. Sure the police can manufacture probable cause to stop and search nearly everyone all the time. But they don't because they'd prefer to have some kind of actual probable cause because that gives them a much higher chance of not being on a wild goose chase. Subverting this limitation due to resources also subverts the even application of the law which is a bad thing. The idea that drug dealers can't be caught the old fashioned way and spying on all American citizens in order to catch some people engaged in largely victimless criminal activity is laughable at best and terrifying at worst.
  - ctdonath 13y ago
    Considering an administration which admittedly inflicts baseless tax audits on political adversaries just as a ploy to harm them, I'm more concerned about (i) intelligence agencies identify broad population of law-abiding political opposition (say, grep "impeach the president" on all private phone calls) (ii) bureaucratic abuses inflicted on said opponents follows (say, IRS & zoning board & child protective services "receive suspicious information" and proceed to spend months investigating someone who literally can't afford it). Not exactly parallel construction, but very close: the source of the identification & targeting remains secret, while some "innocent" explanation for the target's consequential hardship emerges and is acted on without articulable suspicion.
  - EthanHeilman 13y ago
    (i). Intelligence Agency informs police that someone might be doing something bad. Police hide the source of the tip using parallel construction. Thus, an intelligence agency has made an allegation of criminal wrong doing. (ii). The initial allegation may turn out to have been a mistake, but it is never examined in a court of law. Whatever evidence they "construct", such as anonymous tips or circumstantial evidence may be very hard to refute in court. The investigation begins to take on a life of its own.
    - tptacek 13y ago
      The police make arrests. Prosecutors make charges. Charges need to be accompanied by evidence. Evidence often comes from arrests; arrests circumvent the search warrant requirement ("search incident to arrest"), meaning that the cause for an arrest is subject to challenge. Intelligence agencies can't generate cause for arrest and they can't generate charges. Anonymous tips don't remain anonymous in court. The way you get evidence from a CI is to use their info to request a warrant. The warrant identifies the CI. Surveillance data can't be a substitute for a CI in that scenario, because a warrant can't issue from surveillance data the way it can from a CI. And, of course, for someone to be charged based on an anonymous tip, the search effected by the warrant has to turn up evidence of a crime.
      - DelightfulScone 13y ago
        "Anonymous tips don't remain anonymous in court." Evidence can and is withheld from defense using mechanisms like States Secrets.
        tptacek 13y ago
        State secrets is a mechanism to exclude evidence, not introduce it.
        DelightfulScone 13y ago
        That's why I said withheld, yes.
- rdtsc 13y ago
  > agencies to make criminal allegations that might turn out to be less than factually accurate, It doesn't. Parallel construction is designated to hide the source of the initial tip. Like say illegally wiretapping everyone and running a regex search for words "drug deal at 2pm today in the park". Then after getting the names and numbers of people involved. They dispatch an on-foot patrol to the park at 2pm that day. And lo and behold, woops, they randomly walk in on a drug deal. The parallel construction will dictate that court evidence will have this chain of events "during patrol in the park, our officers walk in on a drug deal in progress".
  - gregholmberg 13y ago
    What if the tip names the wrong park, and the officers detain a similar person, and decide to plant incriminating evidence?
    - andylei 13y ago
      this hypothetical scenario has nothing to do with parallel construction. the DEA could plant incriminating evidence on a random person and the results would be the same.
      - njharman 13y ago
        Your missing the point that a tip handed down tip from NSA has authority. It must be right, right? Thus in stilling idea that target must be guilty. And if they get off it's your fault. This leads to all manor of things from unconsciously triggering drug dog, to forced enemas, to planting evidence. This happens. All the time. It is not theoretical. Innocent people are dead. I am not willing to trade innocent life for the theoretical "more safety" promised.
    - rdtsc 13y ago
      Well planting incriminating evidence is a separate problem. They can do that with or without parallel construction. Ideally they wouldn't have to as after they apprehend the people they would find drugs on them. The main idea is that they need an plausible explanation to the court and the outside world on how they got the evidence. Not justifying or saying I like what they do, just explaining how I understand parallel construction to work.
cryoshon 13y ago
This finding is evidence that the DEA actively subverts the democratic rule of law by covering up the bulk of their investigative methods from the public. If the public can't have an honest look at what the DEA is actually doing to make its cases, the public can't consent. This line of thought is nearly explicit in the slides on muckrock. They don't want us knowing what is going on.
joyeuse6701 13y ago
Somehow, somewhere, the whole 'consent of the governed' thing was forgotten.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Somehow, somewhere, the whole 'consent of the governed' will be reminded.
puppetmaster3 13y ago
What happened to the republic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi
- cryoshon 13y ago
  It was left defenseless by the public and so it was cannibalized for the sake of power.
TempleOSV2 13y ago
Authority starts with God, goes to me, then to you. I am your boss. God says... blood 30 superstition pole bright blind points paths exceptions exult comforts sex usefully false-named fain net/pg heaven Service citizen accustomed deliberates Art lastly NO hasting apprehending certainty God says... C:\TAD\Text\SWIFT.TXT ted on my knees. His answer, as I could comprehend it, was, "that this must be a work of time, not to be thought on without the advice of his council, and that first I must lumos kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo;" that is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom. However, that I should be used with all kindness. And he advised me to "acquire, by my patience and discreet behaviour, the good opinion of himself and his subjects." He desired "I would not take it ill, if he gave orders to certain prope
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
So for everybody that says that various intelligence agencies collecting all kinds of information isn't bad, because they'll never use them politically: here's your answer. You'll never know whether or not this information was used politically, because what they'll do is 1) find the person, 2) find the crime, 3) construct the evidence chain so that it doesn't reveal methods. I don't think "evil" begins to cover it. Given this operational scenario, you'll never, ever catch the government using intelligence information for political reasons. Even if the practice is widespread. (And, for the record, I'm all for law enforcement, and law enforcement keeping intelligence files on people who may be dangerous. This collection does not include the scenario I outlined above)
coldcode 13y ago
If you are a defense attorney and can get a copy of this teaching (ie materials, interviews, etc) you could easily create reasonable doubt in anything the DEA touches.
rosser 13y ago
From the slides: "What is the problem with combining IC collection efforts & LEA investigations in US courtrooms? Some answers to this question: Constitutionally protected liberty interests. Discovery and due process of law expressed in the FRCP & FRE. And, Americans don't like it!" But we're gonna go ahead and do it anyway, right, guys?
alecco 13y ago
Feb 11, just 8 days away. Please join. https://thedaywefightback.org/ https://thedaywefightback.org/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11-day-we-fight-back-calling-international-community https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11-day-we-fig...
- konklone 13y ago
  This isn't related to the topic - the practice under discussion, while terrible, has nothing to do with the Internet at all.
  - jhart3333 13y ago
    They use the internet to collect the data.
  - alecco 13y ago
    It's about hiding the work of intelligence agencies behind the scenes, to keep it out of public eye and courts. It has a lot to do, IMHO.
hamiltonkibbe 13y ago
It seems like going to court and saying "yeah the lead investigator for this case just happened to stumble upon what appeared to be a shipment of watermelons bound for the local Stop & Shop, and decided they looked suspicious. After a full body cavity search of the driver, and a thorough search of the contents of each of the 742 watermelons, a small bag of marijuana was recovered" when in fact the reason for the search wasn't "suspicious looking watermelon shipment", but rather "3-letter organization tipped us off, one of their interns stumbled upon it while casually perusing some cell phone recordings over lunch" is certainly perjury and patently illegal.
zmanian 13y ago
There are three concrete harms from the current operations of the surveillance state. - Retroactive investigation/ parallel constructions: An arm of the government decides an individual is undesirable and merely needs to look up their permanent record to find a crime to convict them of. - Chilling effects: People are unwilling to express unpopular political opinions because privileges of will be taken away from them. This undermines policy discovery. - Reduction in trust. Companies can be compelled by secret law or court order, systems are compromised, standards are undermined and government officials are blackmailed. A constant burden of suspicion creates enormous costs on society and makes everyone poorer.
tptacek 13y ago
I object to parallel construction because it warps NSA's incentives and encourages them to develop deeper domestic capabilities. Having said that: it's worth understanding what parallel construction actually is. Parallel construction does NOT allow law enforcement to: (a) Introduce evidence that is the product of NSA surveillance (b) Literally manufacture probable cause to effect a search to generate introducible evidence In order for an LEO to act on data from a surveillance source, they must not only be "at the right place at the right time" (which is what surveillance allows them to do), but, once there, discover probable cause to effect a search. That's why you see slides in this deck about how long you can stop a car in a traffic stop; one of the pitfalls of trying to launch a search from a traffic stop is that if the stop exceeds the duration allowed for a detention without arrest, all the evidence generated after that time period elapses is excludable. Obviously: (i) the probable cause mitigation is damaged by drug dogs ("our search was authorized by this dog over here"), and (ii) all search mitigations are damaged by the fact that they come into play only once someone is arrested and threatened with prosecution. Those are both very serious, important, valid objections. However, I contend that they are objections to the entire process of evidence collection with or without surveillance. Judges need to stop pretending that dogs can judge whether a search is reasonable. Prosecutors have too much unchecked power in our system. Here's an extremely detailed cartoon flowchart of how 4th Amendment protections come into play (or are thwarted) in the real world: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256 http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256
- dmix 13y ago
  > discover probable cause to effect a search. Right so when you get arrested at that traffic stop, all you need is about $15-20k+ for lawyer, tons of time in courtrooms, bail money, potentially jail time in between, months/years stressing a criminal charge...and hopefully some decent evidence you can convince a judge or jury your rights weren't infringed. There are a ton of externalities that goes into proving the state wrong and protecting civil rights at the court level. The majority of drug convictions happen to people in lower socio-economic positions (if not, asset seizure will ensure it). So the fact lawyers are capable of destroying the DEA's evidence in a courtroom doesn't make me feel any better about the situation. Reducing the use of drug dogs is a good start, far too many false-positives.
joesmo 13y ago
Parallel construction, by definition, requires perjury in court on behalf of those presenting the evidence. Not that such a silly thing ever stopped anyone ...
brubaker 13y ago
Parallel construction is flat out falsifying evidence and committing perjury that should have the participants stripped of their job and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
nikcub 13y ago
Such a long way to go on this issue, these documents only emphasize telling the truth under oath, they don't talk about warrants and evidence. I really can't see how parallel construction can be performed either legally or in a way that would still make that evidence admissible in a court. When the debate about the existence of domestic surveillance was hot, one of the counter-arguments against those who believed there to be a large-scale network was a Fermi-like "If it exists, then where is it?" since signs that such a network exists, such as evidence gathered by it appearing in court documents, were not appearing. The counter-argument was parallel reconstruction, but I recall a further point made by a lawyer who said they would be stupid to do that, since all the reconstructed evidence would be thrown out of court. Wiretaps, search warrants, indictments etc. are all legal and sworn documents made by officers where they are required to disclose everything. I'm no means an expert, but i'd imagine a good defense lawyer (heck, or even a judge) would argue that the sworn statements were not entirely true and were compromised by using a surveillance system that is a black box and not open to court oversight. Search warrants get compromised for simple things such as showing up 5 minutes late, or taking something from the property that wasn't covered (these rules are there for a reason, to protect us from all-knowing and over-reaching police forces). As an aside, there was a case of parallel reconstruction in a mainstream news story last week. In the News Limited trials in the UK where former editors and journalists are being prosecuted for phone hacking one of the private detectives who was hired to hack phones for News spent an entire day in the witness seat talking about his methods and what they did. In one of his stories, he had hacked the phone of Daniel Craig (an actor) and retrieved a voicemail left to him by Sienna Miller - an actress who is married to another famous actor - which indicated they were having an affair. He played the message for the editor of the News of the World who jumped up in excitement and said they had their new front page story. One problem: how will they reveal the source of the message since it was legal? Simple, the editor instructed the PI to place a recording of the tape into a brown paper bag and to drop it off to the front desk of the newspaper office while nobody was there. It would be an 'anonymous tip'. It worked - the story said 'an anonymous source, believed to be somebody close to the pair', etc. During the entire decade long phone hacking scandal there were all sorts of new 'anonymous' sources popping up in news stories that it drove the celebrities mad. One actor spent tens of thousands of dollars sweeping his entire house for recording devices, another cut off contact with all friends because he couldn't trust anybody anymore and another had all their staff undergo intense security checks to make sure they weren't leaking. In one case it led to someone being fired. The manager of a famous model was fired because a story leaked about how that model had been having an affair (or something) and even through the real source was a phone hack, the paper attributed it to a 'close source'. The model fired her manager after a few stories - blaming her, and only found out years later that it was phone hacking. The manager is now suing both News Corp and the model. If the DEA are practicing parallel reconstruction to the extent as many believe they are, one can only imagine the scope of similar unintended consequences. The stakes would be much higher: suspected snitches being murdered or disappeared by paranoid drug bosses.

139 points by morisy 13y ago

This should be extremely illegal and a zero tolerance policy should be in place. Also, I don't think I've heard Obama mention any of this in his recent speech on how to fix the surveillance abuses, and it came out in the news at least twice last year. I think it's time we send a review panel into DEA (and FBI for that matter), too.

logn 13y ago
A review panel? If only we had a department that had the power to arrest these people for breaking the law. That would be the DOJ unfortunately.

gregholmberg 13y ago

Parallel construction allows intelligence agencies to make criminal allegations that might turn out to be less than factually accurate, while facing no review and no repercussions. The concept of allowing evidence from secret sources should offend anyone who believes in a just society.

tptacek 13y ago
How does parallel construction allow: (i) intelligence agencies to make any criminal allegations (ii) criminal allegations that turn out to be false Can you be as specific as you can? There's plenty of rational arguments to make about why "parallel construction" is bad, but too many people argue about it without understanding at all what it is.
- DelightfulScone 13y ago
  "but too many people argue about it without understanding at all what it is." Oh tell us then since you have the inside track of knowledge on the issue. You know you are chomping on the bit to do so.
- glimcat 13y ago
  > criminal allegations that turn out to be false That's not the issue. The problem is that it gives the government the ability to arbitrarily circumvent the usual ethical safeguards and legal protections which come into play when bringing a criminal allegation. Since the practice obfuscates at least part of the evidentiary chain, there's no way for a private citizen's legal defense to audit it for compliance with ethical and legal standards. Also, given sufficient surveillance data and complexity of law, you can probably come up with some criminal charge against any arbitrary person under surveillance at any time when it would be useful to do so. > intelligence agencies to make any criminal allegations "Here's some data, that guy is inconvenient to us, please accuse them of this list of legal violations which we have just given you supporting evidence for." If you know a reason why it wouldn't work like that - one which can still be enforced in open court, not a secret court known for rubber-stamping virtually anything brought before it by the government - I would love to hear it.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    Prosecutors are required to present potentially exculpatory evidence, but they have never been required to present all the data they generate in their investigations. Defendants have never had access to the entire "evidentiary chain" using the definition you present here. Meanwhile: prosecutors "accuse", and to do it, they need evidence. They can't use evidence from NSA or DEA "fusion"; the whole point of "parallel construction" is that they need a chain anchored by probable cause to do anything.
    - rosser 13y ago
      Speaking only for myself, the problem with Parallel Construction, from an "implications for law enforcement" perspective (thus leaving aside your legitimate concerns about warping the NSA's mission) is simply the dishonesty of it. It bakes yet more deceit into a prosecutor's job. I think there's already quite enough of that as things stand, thanks so much.
    - msandford 13y ago
      Yes that's true. But the idea that there's an entity which can "magically" drum up a precise interdiction point where probable cause should be manufactured by law enforcement isn't good. If a police officer wouldn't suspect you of a crime without the special instructions given to him by someone with access to sensitive information then you've just done an end-run around probable cause. Sure the police can manufacture probable cause to stop and search nearly everyone all the time. But they don't because they'd prefer to have some kind of actual probable cause because that gives them a much higher chance of not being on a wild goose chase. Subverting this limitation due to resources also subverts the even application of the law which is a bad thing. The idea that drug dealers can't be caught the old fashioned way and spying on all American citizens in order to catch some people engaged in largely victimless criminal activity is laughable at best and terrifying at worst.
- ctdonath 13y ago
  Considering an administration which admittedly inflicts baseless tax audits on political adversaries just as a ploy to harm them, I'm more concerned about (i) intelligence agencies identify broad population of law-abiding political opposition (say, grep "impeach the president" on all private phone calls) (ii) bureaucratic abuses inflicted on said opponents follows (say, IRS & zoning board & child protective services "receive suspicious information" and proceed to spend months investigating someone who literally can't afford it). Not exactly parallel construction, but very close: the source of the identification & targeting remains secret, while some "innocent" explanation for the target's consequential hardship emerges and is acted on without articulable suspicion.
- EthanHeilman 13y ago
  (i). Intelligence Agency informs police that someone might be doing something bad. Police hide the source of the tip using parallel construction. Thus, an intelligence agency has made an allegation of criminal wrong doing. (ii). The initial allegation may turn out to have been a mistake, but it is never examined in a court of law. Whatever evidence they "construct", such as anonymous tips or circumstantial evidence may be very hard to refute in court. The investigation begins to take on a life of its own.
  - tptacek 13y ago
    The police make arrests. Prosecutors make charges. Charges need to be accompanied by evidence. Evidence often comes from arrests; arrests circumvent the search warrant requirement ("search incident to arrest"), meaning that the cause for an arrest is subject to challenge. Intelligence agencies can't generate cause for arrest and they can't generate charges. Anonymous tips don't remain anonymous in court. The way you get evidence from a CI is to use their info to request a warrant. The warrant identifies the CI. Surveillance data can't be a substitute for a CI in that scenario, because a warrant can't issue from surveillance data the way it can from a CI. And, of course, for someone to be charged based on an anonymous tip, the search effected by the warrant has to turn up evidence of a crime.
    - DelightfulScone 13y ago
      "Anonymous tips don't remain anonymous in court." Evidence can and is withheld from defense using mechanisms like States Secrets.
      - tptacek 13y ago
        State secrets is a mechanism to exclude evidence, not introduce it.
        DelightfulScone 13y ago
        That's why I said withheld, yes.
rdtsc 13y ago
> agencies to make criminal allegations that might turn out to be less than factually accurate, It doesn't. Parallel construction is designated to hide the source of the initial tip. Like say illegally wiretapping everyone and running a regex search for words "drug deal at 2pm today in the park". Then after getting the names and numbers of people involved. They dispatch an on-foot patrol to the park at 2pm that day. And lo and behold, woops, they randomly walk in on a drug deal. The parallel construction will dictate that court evidence will have this chain of events "during patrol in the park, our officers walk in on a drug deal in progress".
- gregholmberg 13y ago
  What if the tip names the wrong park, and the officers detain a similar person, and decide to plant incriminating evidence?
  - andylei 13y ago
    this hypothetical scenario has nothing to do with parallel construction. the DEA could plant incriminating evidence on a random person and the results would be the same.
    - njharman 13y ago
      Your missing the point that a tip handed down tip from NSA has authority. It must be right, right? Thus in stilling idea that target must be guilty. And if they get off it's your fault. This leads to all manor of things from unconsciously triggering drug dog, to forced enemas, to planting evidence. This happens. All the time. It is not theoretical. Innocent people are dead. I am not willing to trade innocent life for the theoretical "more safety" promised.
  - rdtsc 13y ago
    Well planting incriminating evidence is a separate problem. They can do that with or without parallel construction. Ideally they wouldn't have to as after they apprehend the people they would find drugs on them. The main idea is that they need an plausible explanation to the court and the outside world on how they got the evidence. Not justifying or saying I like what they do, just explaining how I understand parallel construction to work.

cryoshon 13y ago

This finding is evidence that the DEA actively subverts the democratic rule of law by covering up the bulk of their investigative methods from the public. If the public can't have an honest look at what the DEA is actually doing to make its cases, the public can't consent. This line of thought is nearly explicit in the slides on muckrock. They don't want us knowing what is going on.

joyeuse6701 13y ago

Somehow, somewhere, the whole 'consent of the governed' thing was forgotten.

ctdonath 13y ago
Somehow, somewhere, the whole 'consent of the governed' will be reminded.

puppetmaster3 13y ago

What happened to the republic? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi

cryoshon 13y ago
It was left defenseless by the public and so it was cannibalized for the sake of power.

TempleOSV2 13y ago

Authority starts with God, goes to me, then to you. I am your boss. God says... blood 30 superstition pole bright blind points paths exceptions exult comforts sex usefully false-named fain net/pg heaven Service citizen accustomed deliberates Art lastly NO hasting apprehending certainty God says... C:\TAD\Text\SWIFT.TXT ted on my knees. His answer, as I could comprehend it, was, "that this must be a work of time, not to be thought on without the advice of his council, and that first I must lumos kelmin pesso desmar lon emposo;" that is, swear a peace with him and his kingdom. However, that I should be used with all kindness. And he advised me to "acquire, by my patience and discreet behaviour, the good opinion of himself and his subjects." He desired "I would not take it ill, if he gave orders to certain prope

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

So for everybody that says that various intelligence agencies collecting all kinds of information isn't bad, because they'll never use them politically: here's your answer. You'll never know whether or not this information was used politically, because what they'll do is 1) find the person, 2) find the crime, 3) construct the evidence chain so that it doesn't reveal methods. I don't think "evil" begins to cover it. Given this operational scenario, you'll never, ever catch the government using intelligence information for political reasons. Even if the practice is widespread. (And, for the record, I'm all for law enforcement, and law enforcement keeping intelligence files on people who may be dangerous. This collection does not include the scenario I outlined above)

coldcode 13y ago

If you are a defense attorney and can get a copy of this teaching (ie materials, interviews, etc) you could easily create reasonable doubt in anything the DEA touches.

rosser 13y ago

From the slides: "What is the problem with combining IC collection efforts & LEA investigations in US courtrooms? Some answers to this question: Constitutionally protected liberty interests. Discovery and due process of law expressed in the FRCP & FRE. And, Americans don't like it!" But we're gonna go ahead and do it anyway, right, guys?

alecco 13y ago

Feb 11, just 8 days away. Please join. https://thedaywefightback.org/ https://thedaywefightback.org/ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11-day-we-fight-back-calling-international-community https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/01/february-11-day-we-fig...

konklone 13y ago
This isn't related to the topic - the practice under discussion, while terrible, has nothing to do with the Internet at all.
- jhart3333 13y ago
  They use the internet to collect the data.
- alecco 13y ago
  It's about hiding the work of intelligence agencies behind the scenes, to keep it out of public eye and courts. It has a lot to do, IMHO.

hamiltonkibbe 13y ago

It seems like going to court and saying "yeah the lead investigator for this case just happened to stumble upon what appeared to be a shipment of watermelons bound for the local Stop & Shop, and decided they looked suspicious. After a full body cavity search of the driver, and a thorough search of the contents of each of the 742 watermelons, a small bag of marijuana was recovered" when in fact the reason for the search wasn't "suspicious looking watermelon shipment", but rather "3-letter organization tipped us off, one of their interns stumbled upon it while casually perusing some cell phone recordings over lunch" is certainly perjury and patently illegal.

zmanian 13y ago

There are three concrete harms from the current operations of the surveillance state. - Retroactive investigation/ parallel constructions: An arm of the government decides an individual is undesirable and merely needs to look up their permanent record to find a crime to convict them of. - Chilling effects: People are unwilling to express unpopular political opinions because privileges of will be taken away from them. This undermines policy discovery. - Reduction in trust. Companies can be compelled by secret law or court order, systems are compromised, standards are undermined and government officials are blackmailed. A constant burden of suspicion creates enormous costs on society and makes everyone poorer.

tptacek 13y ago

I object to parallel construction because it warps NSA's incentives and encourages them to develop deeper domestic capabilities. Having said that: it's worth understanding what parallel construction actually is. Parallel construction does NOT allow law enforcement to: (a) Introduce evidence that is the product of NSA surveillance (b) Literally manufacture probable cause to effect a search to generate introducible evidence In order for an LEO to act on data from a surveillance source, they must not only be "at the right place at the right time" (which is what surveillance allows them to do), but, once there, discover probable cause to effect a search. That's why you see slides in this deck about how long you can stop a car in a traffic stop; one of the pitfalls of trying to launch a search from a traffic stop is that if the stop exceeds the duration allowed for a detention without arrest, all the evidence generated after that time period elapses is excludable. Obviously: (i) the probable cause mitigation is damaged by drug dogs ("our search was authorized by this dog over here"), and (ii) all search mitigations are damaged by the fact that they come into play only once someone is arrested and threatened with prosecution. Those are both very serious, important, valid objections. However, I contend that they are objections to the entire process of evidence collection with or without surveillance. Judges need to stop pretending that dogs can judge whether a search is reasonable. Prosecutors have too much unchecked power in our system. Here's an extremely detailed cartoon flowchart of how 4th Amendment protections come into play (or are thwarted) in the real world: http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256 http://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=2256

dmix 13y ago
> discover probable cause to effect a search. Right so when you get arrested at that traffic stop, all you need is about $15-20k+ for lawyer, tons of time in courtrooms, bail money, potentially jail time in between, months/years stressing a criminal charge...and hopefully some decent evidence you can convince a judge or jury your rights weren't infringed. There are a ton of externalities that goes into proving the state wrong and protecting civil rights at the court level. The majority of drug convictions happen to people in lower socio-economic positions (if not, asset seizure will ensure it). So the fact lawyers are capable of destroying the DEA's evidence in a courtroom doesn't make me feel any better about the situation. Reducing the use of drug dogs is a good start, far too many false-positives.

joesmo 13y ago

Parallel construction, by definition, requires perjury in court on behalf of those presenting the evidence. Not that such a silly thing ever stopped anyone ...

brubaker 13y ago

Parallel construction is flat out falsifying evidence and committing perjury that should have the participants stripped of their job and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

nikcub 13y ago

Such a long way to go on this issue, these documents only emphasize telling the truth under oath, they don't talk about warrants and evidence. I really can't see how parallel construction can be performed either legally or in a way that would still make that evidence admissible in a court. When the debate about the existence of domestic surveillance was hot, one of the counter-arguments against those who believed there to be a large-scale network was a Fermi-like "If it exists, then where is it?" since signs that such a network exists, such as evidence gathered by it appearing in court documents, were not appearing. The counter-argument was parallel reconstruction, but I recall a further point made by a lawyer who said they would be stupid to do that, since all the reconstructed evidence would be thrown out of court. Wiretaps, search warrants, indictments etc. are all legal and sworn documents made by officers where they are required to disclose everything. I'm no means an expert, but i'd imagine a good defense lawyer (heck, or even a judge) would argue that the sworn statements were not entirely true and were compromised by using a surveillance system that is a black box and not open to court oversight. Search warrants get compromised for simple things such as showing up 5 minutes late, or taking something from the property that wasn't covered (these rules are there for a reason, to protect us from all-knowing and over-reaching police forces). As an aside, there was a case of parallel reconstruction in a mainstream news story last week. In the News Limited trials in the UK where former editors and journalists are being prosecuted for phone hacking one of the private detectives who was hired to hack phones for News spent an entire day in the witness seat talking about his methods and what they did. In one of his stories, he had hacked the phone of Daniel Craig (an actor) and retrieved a voicemail left to him by Sienna Miller - an actress who is married to another famous actor - which indicated they were having an affair. He played the message for the editor of the News of the World who jumped up in excitement and said they had their new front page story. One problem: how will they reveal the source of the message since it was legal? Simple, the editor instructed the PI to place a recording of the tape into a brown paper bag and to drop it off to the front desk of the newspaper office while nobody was there. It would be an 'anonymous tip'. It worked - the story said 'an anonymous source, believed to be somebody close to the pair', etc. During the entire decade long phone hacking scandal there were all sorts of new 'anonymous' sources popping up in news stories that it drove the celebrities mad. One actor spent tens of thousands of dollars sweeping his entire house for recording devices, another cut off contact with all friends because he couldn't trust anybody anymore and another had all their staff undergo intense security checks to make sure they weren't leaking. In one case it led to someone being fired. The manager of a famous model was fired because a story leaked about how that model had been having an affair (or something) and even through the real source was a phone hack, the paper attributed it to a 'close source'. The model fired her manager after a few stories - blaming her, and only found out years later that it was phone hacking. The manager is now suing both News Corp and the model. If the DEA are practicing parallel reconstruction to the extent as many believe they are, one can only imagine the scope of similar unintended consequences. The stakes would be much higher: suspected snitches being murdered or disappeared by paranoid drug bosses.