DEA Paid Amtrak Secretary $850,000 To Hand Over Confidential Passenger Lists For No Reason
from the uh,-wow dept
We've already written about the DEA's deep involvement with the intelligence community, including them being trained to lie about getting info from the intelligence community when it uses it to bust drug dealers -- a system known as parallel construction, which is encouraged throughout the agency. We also know that AT&T (and possibly others) have employees embedded at the DEA to provide it with even faster access to any information that the DEA wants. We've also covered how the DEA often gets unchecked access to private information and has been caught circumventing laws to get medical records without a warrant. The DEA is also the force behind the NSA's recording of every phone call in the Bahamas.Basically, as bad as the NSA, CIA and FBI may be, the DEA appears to be a pretty massive violator of civil liberties in pursuit of any and all information it can get its hands on. So, given that, it shouldn't be even remotely surprising that the DEA apparently forked over $854,460 to a secretary working for Amtrak to get her to hand over private passenger information for a period of 20 years. Except there is this:
The DEA could have lawfully obtained [this information] for free through a law enforcement network.Also, it seems worth noting that it took Amtrak's inspector general 20 years to figure all this out, and then the operation decided to let the (unnamed) secretary retire (with $854,460 more than she "earned") rather than face any discipline.
On Monday, the office of Amtrak Inspector General Tom Howard declined to identify the secretary or say why it took so long to uncover the payments. Howard's report on the incident concluded, "We suggested policy changes and other measures to address control weaknesses that Amtrak management is considering." DEA spokesman Matt Barden declined to comment.So, the DEA wasted nearly a million dollars to get private info that it could have obtained for free -- but which it probably shouldn't be allowed to have without a warrant. And the "rogue" secretary who forked over this info, while padding her own income, gets off without any consequence at all. Good thing she didn't download public domain material from the internet...
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: dea, passenger list, payments, privacy, secretary
Companies: amtrak
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
I have information about a lot of people available to me and may be willing to part with some of it for a heavily discounted $750,000.
While the information I have may not be useful to you in investigating those selling drugs illegally, that does not seem to matter much to you so I am making this offer.
Thank you.
PS - NSA, if you get this before the DEA, please forward it to them. You may want some of this information as well.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Gender assumption?
Just wanted to point that out...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
CFAA
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Seems like a pattern...
2. Violate laws in name of said war.
3. Profit.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Seems like a pattern...
4. Profit
all better.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Not Mine
Why should the DEA worry, I mean, it's not like it's their personal money or anything?
[ link to this | view in thread ]
presumably...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Seems like a pattern...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Forfeitures - Follow the Money
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Gender assumption?
Then refund the dough.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Gender assumption?
That's frowned upon in writing - to refer to a singular person as "it" or "them" - so most writers will choose a gender-based pronoun, even if the gender is not identified. Mike chose the feminine pronoun. There are many writers today that exclusively choose the feminine pronoun when the subject's gender is unknown.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Gender assumption?
Other potential options are "he or she" and "him or her".
In any case, it's no big deal, but it might be confusing later if the identity becomes known and it turns out to be a man.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Think of the children!!!
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Gender assumption?
"it might be confusing later if the identity becomes known and it turns out to be a man."
And if "he" was used, it would be equally confusing if it turned out to be a woman. There is no winning here.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re:
Sorry, but we already have all of that information. You don't need to send it to us again. Don't worry, if you find out anything else, we'll be the first to know.
NSA^D^D^DDEA.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Gender assumption?
Well, in this case since it was a secretary and a secretary job is presumed to be a feminine job one can argue that it is the use of she here that's stereotypical.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: CFAA
But because someone sworn to uphold the law did it, it's apparently okay.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Gender assumption?
First, the "secretary" being discussed isn't an office pool secretary, but an executive management position (which has never had a woman-oriented gender bias). Second, of all the office secretaries that I've known, -- an admittedly small sample -- it's been pretty close to 50-50 on which gender they were.
It's funny, now that I think of it, I subconsciously thought that the idea that secretaries are usually women was long gone. At least, when I hear "secretary" I don't automatically think "woman" at all.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Re: Re:
Please stop stealing my intellectual property. Because you have stolen this information from me already, I will offer you a license for it at the low, low price of 1.2 billion dollars.
Please think of the corn farmers.
[ link to this | view in thread ]