DEA Has Domestic Spying Program Just Like NSA

[FuzzyLumpkins]

And they lie to the judiciary to cover it's existence up. The federal bureaucracy is a wonderful thing is it not?


(Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

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.

"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.

"It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."

THE SPECIAL OPERATIONS DIVISION

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

More at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805

[DisAsTerBot]

withholding evidence?

Is this going to see any further action or is it going to be a blurb quickly buried by stoking the fears of the boogeyman?

[boutons_deux]

Gaius Publius: IRS is Using NSA Data Too. Who in Town Isn’t? (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/gaius-publius-irs-is-using-nsa-data-too-who-in-town-isnt.html)




This is no longer an NSA data, or DEA data story. It’s a federal, state and local government data-trafficking story. Your Google-collected, Verizon-collected data seems to very broadly available. How broadly? Way more than you thought. Read on for the grizzly details.

We recently reported, along with others, on how the DEA has been getting data from the NSA (http://americablog.com/2013/08/dea-using-nsa-data-then-lying-about-it.html) to aid in their “war on drugs” — then getting prosecutors and cops (DEA and otherwise) to cover up the source of their tips to protect their ability to prosecute.

As bad as the original Snowden-Greenwald NSA story actually is — and if true, it’s very bad indeed (http://americablog.com/2013/08/is-google-arm-of-nsa.html) — this is worse. After all, what’s the DEA (and half the cops and prosecutors in the country) doing with all that NSA data at their disposal?

Unlike others, though, we think the NSA-DEA connection as not just a point-to-point story — as in, NSA data–to–DEA database for drug cop use. It’s actually a many-points–to–many-points story, with the special unit within the DEA that keeps the data acting as a convenient one-stop collection place for both data sources and receivers.

The real DEA story, prior to the most recent revelation, is that the DEA acts as a clearinghouse (http://americablog.com/2013/08/dea-using-nsa-data-then-lying-about-it.html) for these data sources:

▪ FBI
▪ CIA
▪ NSA (including Google and Apple (http://americablog.com/2013/08/is-google-arm-of-nsa.html) and friends)
▪ IRS (meaning all your financial data)
▪ Homeland Security
▪ At least 19 other agencies

And it passes the collected data to these receivers:

▪ “About 10,000″ federal, state and local law enforcement agents
▪ All of their cop and prosecutor friends not on the list
▪ All of their cop and prosecutor friends’ non-cop friends

That’s what we used to think. Now we know more.

Now we know that one of the receivers of NSA (etc.) data is the IRS. (More on that below (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/gaius-publius-irs-is-using-nsa-data-too-who-in-town-isnt.html#irsdea).) What this means is that, in all likelihood, all of the providers of DEA-collected data are also receivers of DEA-collected data.
Think I’m wrong? What are the odds?

What’s the Real Picture of Data-Trafficking at the DEA?

If I’m right, the real picture of data management by the DEA is thus more likely this:

Data sources

▪ FBI
▪ CIA
▪ NSA (again, Google and Apple (http://americablog.com/2013/08/is-google-arm-of-nsa.html))
▪ IRS
▪ Homeland Security
▪ At least 19 other agencies

One central collection and distribution point

▪ The Special Operations Division (SOD) within the DEA
▪ DEA-maintained DICE database

Likely data receivers and users

▪ FBI?
▪ CIA?
▪ NSA?
▪ IRS (verified (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/gaius-publius-irs-is-using-nsa-data-too-who-in-town-isnt.html#irsdea))
▪ Homeland Security?
▪ At least 19 other agencies?

Plus known recipients and “friends who have friends”:

▪ “About 10,000″ federal, state and local law enforcement agents
▪ All of their cop and prosecutor friends not on the list
▪ All of their cop and prosecutor friends’ non-cop friends

Google seems to like these guys.

Wonder what they’re getting in return?

Again, this is not a DEA story, nor even just an NSA story. It’s a very broad data collection and dissemination story. We now know that the IRS can see what Google collects (http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/gaius-publius-irs-is-using-nsa-data-too-who-in-town-isnt.html#irsdea), if it’s passed to the DEA. Which means that the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security (and all of their friends, and many of their friends’ friends) probably have access to Google, Apple, Verizon data, if it gets into the DEA database as well. Is there IRS data in that database? We’ve been told that there is, and why wouldn’t there be? I can manufacture a justification just sitting here (hint: drugs and money laundering). Can the CIA, FBI and Homeland Security see the IRS data?

And who are those “19 other agencies” with a seat at the data-trafficking table? Anyone we should know about? The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, right? Does that mean anyone high enough in the DoJ can ask the FBI to query the database too?

How about those servants of business in the Dept of Commerce? Can they use the DICE database to get Google or IRS dirt on labor organizers and pass it to their friends at, say, Walmart — or to whatever other company the DC revolving door might land them at?

It’s time Reuters found out (or revealed) those 19 name, don’t you think?

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/gaius-publius-irs-is-using-nsa-data-too-who-in-town-isnt.html

[boutons_deux]

Microsatellites: What Big Eyes They Have

PEOPLE already worried about the candid cameras on Google Glass and low-flying drones can add a new potential snooper to the list: cameras on inexpensive, low-orbiting microsatellites that will soon be sending back frequent, low-cost snapshots of most of Earth (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/earth_planet/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier)’s populated regions from space

First into space in the microsatellite business will be the San Francisco company Planet Labs (http://planet-labs.com/), which plans to launch a fleet of 28 small satellites at the end of the year that will photograph the planet around the clock, with frequent updates. The company has already sent up two trial satellites for test runs, and will dispatch the entire set, called Flock-1, in December, said Will Marshall, a co-founder of the company and a former NASA scientist.

The Planet Labs’ satellites won’t be able to distinguish your face or read your license plate — the cameras don’t have that level of resolution. But the frequency with which images can be updated could raise privacy questions, said Timothy Edgar (http://www.watsoninstitute.org/contacts_detail.cfm?id=976), a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University and a former director of privacy and civil liberties in the Obama administration.

Mr. Edgar contrasted the satellite images with those provided by Google Earth (http://www.google.com/earth/index.html) — the ones that people zoom in on to see, for example, an aerial view of their homes.”That’s just an image of your house that was probably taken a few years ago,” he said. “It may feel like you are being watched, but you aren’t. It’s just a static picture that’s most likely several years old.”

But a satellite that regularly passes over your cabin deep in the woods and photographs a car that is sometimes parked there — and sometimes not — has different ramifications. “It can show a pattern, for example, when you appear to be at home and when you’re away,” he said.

Planet Labs’ technology, like that at other microsatellite companies such as Skybox Imaging (http://www.skyboximaging.com/), are benefiting from the progressive miniaturization of consumer electronic components, along with a federal effort to commercialize space. “What we are seeing are smaller satellites that have similar capabilities to much larger, traditional satellites,” said Glenn Lightsey (http://www.ae.utexas.edu/faculty/faculty-directory/lightsey), a professor at the University of Texas who founded and directs the Texas Spacecraft Lab there. “Since putting a satellite in orbit is a function of its size, these new satellites are able to get into orbit at a much lower cost,” he said.

The lightweight satellites have another advantage: the companies don’t have to spend millions of dollars for a rocket to get them into space. Instead, they can hitch a ride as a secondary payload on a rocket already making the trip. Planet Labs will send its satellites on an Antares rocket when it heads out on a cargo transportation flight to the International Space Station.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/11/business/microsatellites-what-big-eyes-they-have.html?partner=rss&emc=rss&_r=0