DEA Running Massive Wiretap Program Almost Entirely Through A Single California County Courthouse
from the behold,-the-Machine! dept
The DOJ has been instrumental in curbing abuse and misconduct by local law enforcement agencies around the nation. Its own backyard, however, remains a complete mess.
The FBI and DEA have been obstructing investigations by the DOJ's Inspector General for several years now. The DOJ only just recently got around to addressing the widespread warrantless use of Stingray devices by both of these agencies. DEA agents are hooking up with prostitutes at "sex parties" while on the clock and receiving bonuses rather than suspensions or pink slips. The US Marshals Service has been acting as a law unto itself, confiscating cell site simulator records to keep them out of the hands of FOIA requesters, flying its own airborne cell tower spoofers and blowing asset forfeiture funds on $10,000 conference room tables.
Now this, as uncovered by Brad Heath and Brett Kelman of USA Today:
Federal drug agents have built a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs, secretly intercepting tens of thousands of Americans' phone calls and text messages to monitor drug traffickers across the United States despite objections from Justice Department lawyers who fear the practice may not be legal.The chain of command for the DEA runs UP to the DOJ, not vice versa, as would be suggested from this paragraph. The DEA apparently isn't too concerned its parent agency's own lawyers find its actions potentially illegal. It's going to do what it's going to do because drug wars don't fight themselves.
The DEA is getting away with it because it has its own "connect" in Riverside County. There's no telling how much venue shopping resulted in this bit of serendipity. All that matters are the results.
Nearly all of that surveillance was authorized by a single state court judge in Riverside County, who last year signed off on almost five times as many wiretaps as any other judge in the United States. The judge's orders allowed investigators — usually from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — to intercept more than 2 million conversations involving 44,000 people, federal court records show.This massive amount of surveillance -- stemming almost entirely from a single judge and his presumably overactive wrist/writs -- is problematic. More so are the numerous explanations offered up by officials for this gaping surveillance portal d/b/a Judge Helios Hernandez's courtroom. Hernandez's enthusiasm for issuing wiretap warrants to the DEA may have something to do with his history as a narcotics prosecutor. But for the record, he's offering the following justification for his actions.
Hernandez declined to comment through a spokesman.The DEA offered this clarification.
Hernandez approved 20 times as many wiretaps as his counterparts in San Bernardino County. DEA officials said they could not explain that difference.More details were provided by Deena Bennett, who heads the DEA's wiretap unit.
Bennett, a one-time contestant on the reality show Survivor, rebuffed attempts to contact her, telling a reporter that "the fact that you have my cellphone number is really harassment, and I'm going to report it."The DOJ's lawyers, however, have more to say on the issue. For one, the DOJ believes these warrant requests should be routed through federal courts, rather than state courts, considering they cover violations of federal law and, more importantly, the standards the DEA needs to meet to obtain warrants are higher.
The DEA has used warrants issued by a California county judge to chase down suspects as far away as Virginia and New York. It's also engaged in parallel construction to cover its tracks, something the DOJ is now investigating. What little the DEA had to say in its defense was that it preferred to seek warrants in areas where it feels more intercession is needed and, most tellingly, where it can perform "most effectively."
Because it has cut federal courts out of the warrant process, the DEA is likely not showing it has exhausted other investigatory options before asking for intrusive wiretaps. The DOJ's displeasure with the DEA's actions means the resulting prosecutions will almost never make their way into federal courts.
"It was made very clear to the agents that if you're going to go the state route, then best wishes, good luck and all that, but that case isn't coming to federal court," a former Justice Department lawyer said.Or more succinctly:
"They'd want to bring these cases into the U.S. Attorney's Office, and the feds would tell them no (expletive) way," a former Justice Department official said.The troubling implication of these statements is that while the DOJ's legal counsel may have expressed its displeasure at the DEA's surveillance overreach, it apparently never stepped in to fix the issue. It simply told the DEA to take its tainted cases elsewhere.
On top of that, the DEA seemed far more interested in simply taking stuff from suspects rather than locking them up.
[D]EA agents and local detectives in South Gate, Calif., near Los Angeles, used a state-court wiretap to target a man named Omar Salazar, who the DEA suspected was tied to a Mexican drug trafficking group. Between searches of Salazar's car and his house, officers seized $76,869.94, a gun and a cache of illegal drugs, including 36 pounds of methamphetamine and 5 pounds of heroin. Investigators found some of the drugs in a safe in Salazar's garage, along with a box of ammunition and probation paperwork from one of his previous arrests.The DOJ and local prosecutors probably had nearly 77,000 reasons for abandoning Salazar's prosecution. Here are none of them.
That should have been enough to build a significant federal case with a long mandatory prison sentence, but that was not what happened. Court records show the Justice Department prosecuted the $76,869.94 in a civil asset seizure case. But it did not prosecute Salazar.
Neither the DEA nor prosecutors would explain why.Sounds about right. They probably weren't expecting to ever answer questions about their actions… at least not questions posed by journalists. As for the DOJ, it make be making angry noises about its troublesome drug enforcement child but it has not shown any willingness to rein the agency in. The problem isn't going to fix itself and it appears the DEA's perfectly fine with running its prosecutions through state courts and using warrants from local courts to pursue suspects all over the nation. The DOJ needs to flex a bigger muscle than its tongue if anything's going to change.
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Filed Under: 4th amendment, dea, doj, helio hernandez, riverside, wiretapping
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Re:
(Judge Rodney Gilstrap: 968 patent cases in 2014).
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This brings up the question of jurisdiction. So long as a subject of an investigation can be established to be present in a specific area - Riverside County, California in this case - no problem. Otherwise the DEA (or any Federal LEA) would have to ask a federal district judge for any warrant. Asking a county or state level district judge is asking for problems later: a legitimate case can get tossed on the basis of lack of jurisdiction.
That's likely why DOJ has stated such cases won't go anywhere with them: even if they get a conviction it will likely be overturned on appeal due to the jurisdictional issue(s).
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Re: Re:
They just want a license to steal.
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Excuse for misbehaviour..
/s
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You know the old saying,
Give a man a fish, he eats for a day. Deputize a man so he can seize the fish of the local drug trafficker, he eats for a lifetime.
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I read the story on Drudge yesterday I my first thought was this is a asset forfeiture cash cow. I believe the original article said the cost of these wiretaps was $18 million. I would be expecting a big return on my investment.
It's probably time to look into the judges expense accounts or dare I say...his sources of income?
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The state of things
And the bitter pill is that no matter who is elected: Federal, State, Municipal; nothing will change.
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Re: The state of things
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But good luck to Mr. Salazar on getting any of his stuff back. No checks and balances on that.
And I REALLY hope he was ACTUALLY a drug dealer...
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Rocket docket ?
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To the next POTUS...
It's too late for the current POTUS to do anything, but these spoiled children have been running amuck for too long and need a good spanking.
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Re: To the next POTUS...
...get your house under control.
I think Sanders is the only one running who I can imagine doing anything about this.
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Defense Attorneys Dream
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Re: Defense Attorneys Dream
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DEA the "Gift" That Keeps on Giving
Link to primer:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/09/11/creating-a-crime-how-the-cia-commandeered-the-dea/
The paragraphs below are excerpts from Creating a Crime: How the CIA Commandeered the DEA
Institutionalized corruption began at headquarters, where FBN executives provided cover for CIA assets engaged in drug trafficking. In 1966, Agent John Evans was assigned as an assistant to enforcement chief John Enright.
“And that’s when I got to see what the CIA was doing,” Evans said. “I saw a report on the Kuomintang saying they were the biggest drug dealers in the world, and that the CIA was underwriting them. Air America was transporting tons of Kuomintang opium.” Evans bristled. “I took the report to Enright. He said, ‘Leave it here. Forget about it.’
“Other things came to my attention,” Evans added, “that proved that the CIA contributed to drug use in America. We were in constant conflict with the CIA because it was hiding its budget in ours, and because CIA people were smuggling drugs into the US. We weren’t allowed to tell, and that fostered corruption in the Bureau.”
FYI the acronym FBN found in the above excerpted paragraphs refers to the Federal Bureau of Narcotics which was merged with the Bureau of Drug Abuse Control (BDAC) in 1968 in creating the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD). BNDD later became the predecessor of todays DEA in 1973 (another gift from the Nixon administration).
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Re: DEA the "Gift" That Keeps on Giving
That said, I do not condone any government agency participating in drug trade (or sex parties) even if it brings other culprits to justice. At the same time I abhor the ‘war on drugs’ and would much prefer a system of regulation and taxation, even those would not be just.
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Re: Re: DEA the "Gift" That Keeps on Giving
The Second Opium War 1856 - 1860 occurred when the British Crown attempted to force the legalization of the opium trade in china (amongst other ignoble British acts).
It is safe to say the British Crown supported the opium trade as official policy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
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Re: Re: Re: DEA the "Gift" That Keeps on Giving
Romanticizing things that are morally repugnant depends upon who is doing the moralizing. Don’t trust your government to do it for you.
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Essentially the DEA like Los Zetas exists solely and completely to drive out the competition so it can sell its own homegrown crystal meth and heroin.
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I'm guessing that some of the 44,000 people that she wiretapped might be inclined to agree that it is, at a minimum, harassment.
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The DEA steals from one person, that's bad, but the immediate result of their action is centered around one person.
The NSA cripples a security system in order to make their job easier, that's worse, as it affects everyone that uses a that security system, putting thousands if not more at risk.
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There was a time. . .
When elected officials and government employee's aren't held accountable for there actions, they cease to serve anybody but themselves.
But we should stop harassing them...
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"And we should care why again?"
They don't need to take the cases to court, and in fact they almost certain don't want to.
That should have been enough to build a significant federal case with a long mandatory prison sentence, but that was not what happened. Court records show the Justice Department prosecuted the $76,869.94 in a civil asset seizure case. But it did not prosecute Salazar.
They're in it for the chance to steal anything not nailed down or on fire, any actual convictions against people are purely incidental. They can't take the resulting cases to court? So what, that's not the plan anyway, so it's hardly surprising that the 'warning' from the DOJ was ignored, as it doesn't impact their actions in the slightest.
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DEA Has Blood on its Hands
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Nothing changes
— Roger Q. Mills of Texas, 1887, quoted repeatedly during a December 1914 debate in Congress over alcohol Prohibition
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Re: Nothing changes
Its always nice to know that others can actually see through the smoke and mirrors, and recognise the truth.
Its even nicer when its a quote from the past that has already proven true.
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The Untouchables V1.2b
I have to wonder just how much the judge receives in kick-backs for his co-operation. He should be really close to sealing the deal for that retirement chalet in Spain by now.
American Justice, fascism style.
You really gotta love the way the so-called "good guys" use tax payer's money to compete with the so called "bad guys" for all that untraceable drug cash, made possible by the "good guys" War on Drugs contraband inflation of what would otherwise be dirt cheap substances.
Its pure political poetry.
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