The Drug War Is Creating Problems Too Big To Fix

from the in-which-warning-signs-are-greeted-with-praise,-enthusiasm-and-blinders dept

David Colarusso, a public defender turned data scientist, has a fascinating post at Law Technology Today describing the many issues arising from the abusive activities of a single chemist at the Massachusetts state drug lab. The starting point of his post -- and his problems -- trace back a few years.

In 2012, it was discovered that a chemist working at the Massachusetts state drug lab in Jamaica Plain had been falsifying drug tests (e.g., claiming that samples contained narcotics without testing them and even adding cocaine to samples to get a positive result when prior testing came back negative). She had worked at the lab for nearly a decade, and these revelations called into question the outcomes in tens of thousands of cases.

Obviously, this sort of tampering means there are convictions waiting to be overturned. But two years later, little progress has been made. It isn't that the state is obstructing efforts to make the falsely-convicted whole again (there may be some of that, but Colarusso's post doesn't indicate there is), but that nearly a decade's-worth of bogus lab work potentially infects thousands of convictions. Narrowing down this list to those directly affected is an enormous task, one that Colarusso was tasked with making more manageable. Narrowing down "The List" to a single link in the evidence chain -- the drug receipt -- still returned far too many potential matches to be of use. Additional restrictions trimmed the possible matches a bit more, but still left far too many potential victims of the chemist's work.

Staff attorneys take only a small fraction of indigent cases. The majority are handled by private attorneys. So only a subset of defendants on The List would be in our client files. However, given The List contained nearly 40,000 names, this subset was still rather sizable. So we used some nice open source software to look for matches between our clients’ names and those found on the list (this involved some data wrangling in Python and Pandas along with the creation of a nice IPython Notebook or two). This gave us a rough list of clients on The List, and we used these names to create a list of their co-defendants.

The narrowing of the field only did so much. The List remained sizable, thanks to inconsistencies inherent in the system itself.

This gave us a rough list of clients on The List, and we used these names to create a list of their co-defendants. We then checked The List for the co-defendant names. Unfortunately, a lot of these were missing. If we assumed the same rate of missing names across all cases, it seemed The List was missing somewhere between 0 and 9,600 names. Wait, what? That’s right, thousands of potentially missing names. The uncertainty came from the fact that we had to match names. The List did not come with dates of birth, addresses, or Social Security Numbers—just names. So occasionally, we could not find a name we were looking for because the Commonwealth and CPCS disagreed on the spelling of a name or someone made a transcription error.

By this point in the investigation, the master list was still huge and it was obvious the list itself was missing hundreds of names, which meant hundreds of possibly wrongly-convicted citizens. The reality of this situation was this: to track down those missing names and to finally set the wheels of justice in motion, thousands of police reports would need to be read and cross-referenced against those on the master list. But who will do this? And with what funds? That's still unclear. It all depends on who feels justice should be served and who feels justice should be served, but only up to a certain dollar amount.

So, the problem -- which was one person in one lab falsifying thousands of test results -- has become something so unwieldy that it may never result in the exoneration of everyone chemist Annie Dookhan managed to wrongly put behind bars. The problem is too big to solve, and much of that has to do with the efficiency of drug prosecutions versus the much less efficient wheels of bureaucracy. Data wrangling helped determine the size of the problem and point a way towards a solution, but the solution is still hundreds, if not thousands, of hours away.

But Colarusso points to one aspect that should have been noticed and would have kept this from becoming a 40,000-file catastrophe (and that's without counting the undetermined number of omissions).

The real promise is in catching the next scandal early. This means listening to data and looking for patterns. The rogue chemist had a throughput three times that of the next “most productive” chemist. That should have been a red flag. Data science offers the promise of mining data for signals such as these and sounding the alarm.

But they weren't looking for a problem at the drug lab. They were looking for productivity. Dookhan's suspiciously-fast output wasn't greeted with suspicion. It was greeted with praise and an increased workload.

The report shows that the Hinton lab leaned heavily on Dookhan’s productivity. Supervisors lauded her work ethic and assigned her an increasing share of tests.

“From January 1, 2004, through December 31, 2011, Dookhan was assigned 25.3% of all analyses in the Drug Lab and completed 21.8% of all tests conducted by staff,” the report said.

There's a point when a problem is still manageable and there's a point when it becomes too big to correct within the confines of the system that helped create it. The drug lab itself pushed it from solvable to impossible. What happened here isn't an isolated incident. Similar abuses have occurred at the nation's top labs -- those belonging to the FBI. Results of forensic testing were overstated to prosecutors, who then put these experts on the stand to help convict hundreds of thousands of people using the questionable results. It's only because of outside pressure that the FBI and DOJ are even looking into this, and it's easy to imagine "The List" of possibly wrongly-convicted persons here far exceeds the 40,000+ Colarusso tangled with.

In addition to the problem begin ignored for two decades, the effort to right the FBI's wrong isn't being pursued with nearly the same enthusiasm as the bogus prosecutions. And yet, there were early warning signs that were ignored. Information about the FBI's evidence issues was passed on to prosecutors -- but this information, including exculpatory evidence, was never passed on to defense attorneys.

The time to handle a problem is before it negatively affects thousands by depriving them of their liberty. But the desire to fight a drug war led to the cover up of exculpatory evidence by US prosecutors working with the FBI and the opportunity to fake even more test results in Annie Dookhan's case. Caught in the middle of all of this are thousands who may never see justice done because the problem was ignored until it no longer could be.

Filed Under: drug war, falsified results, massachusetts

Officer Indicted For Lying On Warrant Application That Led To Toddler Being Burned By Flashbang Grenade

from the actually,-I'd-rather-have-honest-cops-than-burned-toddlers,-TYVM dept

The local police union defended the indefensible: the burning/maiming of a toddler with a flashbang grenade, delivered during a no-knock raid in service of the Drug War. According to the union rep, burned toddlers are just the price society has to pay to keep the streets relatively free of criminals.

"You have to draw the line between your right as a citizen to privacy and a community's right to live in a crime-free environment. You can't have them both," Mills said.

Thanks, but no thanks. Not only did the union defend these Georgia police officers' needlessly aggressive tactics, but it attempted to lay the blame for a burned toddler at the public's feet. And now, with a grand jury indictment being handed down, it appears the union was also defending a liar.

According to the indictment, [Deputy] Autry falsely claimed a confidential informant who had provided reliable information in the past had bought methamphetamine from Wanis Thonetheva at his mother's house in Cornelia. In truth, the informant was newly minted, and it was his roommate who claimed (without verification) to have bought drugs at the house. That lie was the basis for the early-morning, no-knock raid during which 18-month-old Bounkham "Bou Bou" Phonesavanh, Thonetheva's cousin, was nearly killed by a flash-bang grenade that landed in the playpen where he was sleeping.

Any CI that can put a no-knock raid in motion is inherently trustworthy. Except when they aren't. So, much like the toddler's family's lawsuit alleged, the impetus for the raid that saw SWAT members tripping over children's toys in the yard on their way to tossing a flashbang grenade into a crib was nothing more than some random citizen "helping" keep his neighborhood safe.

All that investigative work and "upon information and belief" was actually Habersham County Deputy Sheriff Nikki Autry spinning a tale of small-time drug running in exchange for the permission to perform the law enforcement version of a home invasion.

Specifically, Defendant Autry provided and swore, in pertinent part, (1) that she conducted an undercover drug investigation during which time CI #1459 was able to purchase a quantity of methamphetamine from [W.T] at [W.T.'s] residence; (2) that CI #1459 [was] a true and reliable informant who provided information in the past that led to criminal charges on individuals selling illegal narcotics… and (3) that she confirmed that "there [was] heavy traffic in and out of the residence."

This information that Defendant Autry provided and swore to was false, because, as Defendant Autry then well knew: (1) CI #1459 did not purchase a quantity of methamphetamine from W.T. during her investigation; (2) CI #1459 had not provided information in the past that led to criminal charges on individuals selling illegal narcotics… and (3) she had not confirmed that there was heavy traffic in and out of the residence.

The presentment accompanying the grand jury's findings suggest several improvements for drug enforcement activities, starting with dialing back the "gung-ho" aspects of drug warring.

Some of what contributed to this tragedy can be attributed to well-intentioned people getting in too big a hurry, and not slowing down and taking enough time to consider the possible consequences of their actions. Without serious supervision and constant vigilance, the work of drug enforcement, like many other jobs, can unfortunately become routine and lead to complacency and lack of attention to detail. The difference in this type of work is that the consequences can be devastating to both citizens and law enforcement when things go wrong.

Making thing go "right" more often means bringing SWAT teams and tactics back in line with their original intentions: for use only the most dangerous operations. Over the past few decades, SWAT teams have gone from seldom-used specialists who dealt with shootouts and hostage situations to routine -- but extraordinarily violent -- delivery services for unremarkable search/arrest warrants. The presentment points out law enforcement agencies have several options that don't involve violently raiding residences during odd hours.

We recommend that whenever reasonably possible, suspects be arrested away from a home when doing so can be accomplished without extra risk to law enforcement and to citizens. Going into a home with the highest level of entry should be reserved for those cases where it is absolutely necessary. This is to protect both citizens and law enforcement officers.

We have heard evidence that many drug suspects often initially believe a law enforcement entry is in fact a drug robbery. In an instant, they reach for a weapon or take an action that makes a situation escalate. This is dangerous to all involved, and neither the public nor law enforcement officers should be in this dangerous split second situation unless it is absolutely necessary for the protection of the public, which is the highest concern for our lawenforcement officers under their duty.

It's a nice set of words, but the real test will be the application of these principles -- principles that never should have been abandoned in the first place. To start with, it's rare to find an officer who places protection of the public over protection of themselves. Almost every act of unwarranted violence is defended by the words "feared for my safety." We don't ask that officers become punching bags and bullet-catchers, but there's a lot of leeway between a "furtive motion" and emptying a service weapon into an unarmed person. (Or tossing a flashbang through the nearest window with little regard for what lies behind it.)

The standard MO for drug-related warrants is to deliver them with as much violence, force and noise as possible, under the assumption that every drug dealer -- no matter how small -- awaits the arrival of police with barricades and an arsenal. This simply isn't borne out by the results of these raids, which often fail to turn up any weapons -- or at least none being wielded by the residents of the home. In some cases, there are also no drugs to be found, but this result rarely leads to the turfing of a CI or a less-violent entry when serving the next warrant.

The deaths and injuries caused by drug enforcement aren't in danger of approaching the death and injuries caused by the drug trade, but the former is more disturbing than the latter. While we might expect a certain amount of violence from purveyors of illicit substances, we don't really expect as much from law enforcement. And yet we're seeing it occur on a far too regular basis.

Filed Under: drug war, flash bang, georgia, no knock raid, police, swat

Sheriffs' Association Urges 'Investigation' Of Assistant Attorney General Nominee For Her Pro-Drug Legalization Comments

from the WE-HAVE-SO-MANY-MOUTHS-TO-FEED dept

When it comes to the business of law enforcement, there's one golden rule: thou shalt not derail the money train. Drug enforcement is a multi-billion dollar industry -- not just here in the US, but all over the world. "Industry" is the correct term. Drug busts push people into private prisons. The pursuit of drug dealers and users gives local law enforcement agencies access to federal funding and cheap (or free) military gear. Millions more are spent on "educational" programs like D.A.R.E., which teaches children subtleties like "all drugs are bad" and "so are all drug users." Just Say No, anyone?

These billions are wasted. Four decades into the drug war Nixon formally kicked off by deputizing multiple-substance abuser Elvis Presley as a "Federal Agent at Large" for the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, and we have nothing to show for it. Drugs are as widely-available as ever, often featuring both higher quality and lower prices.

If law enforcement agencies were honest, they'd admit they want this war to go on forever. It's profitable, plays well with much of the voting demographic, provides them with new toys and it gives them the excuse to claim property that isn't theirs.

That explains this bit of noxious stupidity from the National Sheriffs' Association (the other NSA) [via The Drug WarRant]:

On behalf of the National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) and the 3080 elected sheriffs nationwide, Sheriff John Aubrey, NSA President and Sheriff of Jefferson County, Kentucky wrote today to The Honorable Chuck Grassley to advise him of our strong concerns over the potential nomination of Vanita Gupta as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. NSA believes that Ms. Gupta’s previous statements on a range of issues make her ill-suited for this important post.

If Ms. Gupta is formally nominated, NSA urges Grassley to investigate her previous statements on the legalization of drugs. As recently as 2012, she wrote in the Huffington Post that “states should decriminalize simple possession of all drugs, particularly marijuana, and for small amounts of other drugs.” Decriminalization of all drugs—including heroin, LSD, cocaine, and more—would have disastrous effects on our communities and our citizens. Communities have been crippled by drug abuse and addiction, stifling economic productivity and destroying families. Ms. Gupta’s short-sighted statements on legalization and her apparent beliefs would put her at odds with the goal of public safety day in and day out. As the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, it is imperative that any nominee understand the challenges faced by law enforcement in protecting our communities.

The NSA "urges" Sen. Grassley to "investigate" statements publicly made by Ms. Gupta. In what reality does that sentence make sense? How do you "investigate" opinions that were offered freely and publicly? What this association wants isn't an "investigation." It just wants to throw some mud and hope it's enough to head off a nominee that might tamper with the money train's tracks.

Look at the wording it uses to describe what's happening because of "drug use and addiction." As if tossing tons of people in prison for violating outdated drug laws doesn't "stifle economic productivity" or "destroy families."

The NSA also completely ignores the fact that four US states have fully legalized marijuana for recreational use and many more are working towards decriminalizing possession. If there's a drug problem in America, at least half the blame lies with the enforcement of drug laws. The US locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world, and has led to an expansion of law enforcement power at the expense of Americans' civil liberties. No-knock raids -- almost all of which are propelled by drug charges -- have placed both citizens and police officers in the line of fire. A cottage industry of law enforcement-focused surveillance technology has sprung up over the past decade, thanks to this constant and narrow focus on one section of criminal law.

These sheriffs want an assistant AG that works for them, rather than for the public. That's the most disgusting message this letter sends. Hopefully, Sen. Grassley will file this in the recycling bin shortly after reading it. Without a doubt, Gupta will be questioned about her views on legalization, but let's hope that's just because there's still too many reactionary, tough-on-crime types circulating Capitol Hill, rather than this self-serving agency being capable of wielding any significant amount of influence.

Filed Under: assistant attorney general, doj, drug legalization, drug war, legalization, sheriffs, vanita gupta

DEA Gets Unchecked Access To Call Records; Taught To Lie About Where They Got Them

from the your-due-process-is-no-match-for-our-Drug-War dept

Shortly after the Snowden leaks began exposing the NSA's massive collection efforts, the New York Times uncovered the DEA's direct access to AT&T telecom switches (via non-government employee "analysts" working for AT&T), from which it and other law enforcement agencies were able to gather phone call and location data.

Unlike the NSA's bulk records programs (which are limited to holding five years worth of data), the Hemisphere database stretches back to 1987 and advertises instant access to "10 years of records." And unlike the NSA's program, there's not even the slightest bit of oversight. All law enforcement needs to run a search of the Hemisphere database is an administrative subpoena -- a piece of paper roughly equivalent to calling up Hemisphere analysts and asking them to run a few numbers. Administrative subpoenas are only subject to the oversight of the agency issuing them.

It's highly unlikely these administrative subpoenas are stored (where they could be accessed as public records) considering the constant emphasis placed on parallel construction in the documents obtained by Dustin Slaughter of MuckRock -- documents it took the DEA ten months to turn over.

Unlike the documents obtained by the New York Times (possibly inadvertently), these do contain a few redactions, including some apparent success stories compiled at the end of the presentation. But like the earlier documents, the documents show that the DEA and law enforcement have unchecked access to a database that agents and officers are never allowed to talk about -- not even inside a courtroom.

It is expected that all Hemisphere requests will be paralleled with a subpoena for CDRs from the official carrier for evidentiary purposes.

It's spelled out more explicitly on a later slide, listed under "Official Reporting."

DO NOT mention Hemisphere in any official reports or court documents.

Judging from the request date, it would appear that this version of the Hemisphere presentation possibly precedes the New York Times' version. However, this one does not name the cooperating telco, although that appears to be a deliberate choice of the person writing the presentation, rather than due to redaction. At one point the document declares Hemisphere can access records "regardless of carrier," but later clarifies that it will only gather info that crosses certain telecom switches -- most likely AT&T's. Additional subpoenas will be needed to gather info from other carriers, as well as to obtain subscriber information linked to searched numbers. This small limitation plays right into the DEA's insistence that Hemisphere be "walled off" from defendants, court systems and the public.

If exigent circumstances make parallel construction difficult, Hemisphere analysts (non-government liaisons within the telco) will "continue to work with the investigator throughout the entire prosecution process in order to ensure the integrity of Hemisphere and the case at hand." Analysts are allowed to advise investigators on report writing, presentations to prosecutors and issues occurring during the trial phase. The word "integrity" seems out of place when it describes non-government employees assisting government agencies in hiding the origin of evidence from other government agencies.

Cross-referencing what's been redacted in this one with the unredacted document published earlier, it appears as though the DEA is trying to (belatedly) hide the fact that its Hemisphere can also search IMSI and IMEI data (for wireless connections). Although this document states (after a long redaction) that Hemisphere does not collect subscriber information, that's only partially true. As of July 2012, subscriber information for AT&T customers can be obtained from the database. This information may have been redacted or it may be that this presentation pre-dates this added ability.

What this shows is that the DEA has access to loads of information and a policy of "parallel construction in all things." Tons of other government agencies, including the NSA, FBI and CIA are funneling information to the DEA and instructing it to hide the origin. The DEA then demands law enforcement agencies around the nation to do the same thing. This stacks the deck against defendants, who are "walled off" from the chain of evidence, preventing them from challenging sources, methods or the integrity of the evidence itself.

Filed Under: call records, dea, drug war, embedded employees, hemisphere, lies, parallel construction

NSA Is Recording Every Phone Call... In The Bahamas?!?

from the dammit,-we-said-terrorists,-not-tourists! dept

So, back in March, the Washington Post published a report about the NSA's MYSTIC program, where it was recording all phone calls from an unnamed country. The Washington Post chose not to reveal that country, leading many folks to assume that it was going to be a country like Afghanistan, Pakistan or Iraq. Would you believe... that it was actually the Bahamas? Ryan Devereaux, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras have the long and detailed story over at The Intercept, revealing the SOMALGET program, a part of MYSTIC, which recorded every phone call from the Bahamas, not for terrorism, but to be able to hand over information about illegal drugs to the DEA.

According to documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the surveillance is part of a top-secret system – code-named SOMALGET – that was implemented without the knowledge or consent of the Bahamian government. Instead, the agency appears to have used access legally obtained in cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to open a backdoor to the country's cellular telephone network, enabling it to covertly record and store the "full-take audio" of every mobile call made to, from and within the Bahamas – and to replay those calls for up to a month.

Other countries being targeted under MYSTIC, as revealed by the Intercept: Mexico, the Philippines and Kenya. There is also one other, unnamed, country that the US is recording all calls for, but even The Intercept won't reveal that one (noting: "specific, credible concerns that doing so could lead to increased violence"). Either way, this has resulted in plenty of people pointing out that "tourists" and "terrorists" are not the same thing -- while noting that tourism is 60% of GDP in the Bahamas, with 85% of those tourists come from the US. Others have pointed out that, perhaps, the use of the Bahamas was just a convenient testbed where most people wouldn't notice, and where the information could easily be useful for the NSA's partners at the DEA. Though, on that front, Julian Sanchez points out that one of the reasons the NSA got in trouble back in the 1970s with the Church Committee, was because the government used the NSA to evade limits on domestic wiretaps for illegal drugs.

As the report notes, the purpose of SOMALGET seems to have nothing to do with stopping terrorism, but is entirely about helping the DEA in its drug war efforts. And, of course, that also explains how the US was able to set this up. Basically, the DEA has a good relationship with the government in the Bahamas, and when it needed to set up phone taps, it appears that the Bahamas more or less let them bring in their own contractors to set up the phone taps. And, rather than just set it up to tap some individuals, the NSA swooped in and helped those "contractors" tap the entire phone network because... "collect it all." Note how the "cover name" for the MYSTIC access provider is blacked out here: The report further highlights that the DEA is one of the world's largest intelligence agencies, and often has greater access in a variety of countries, because those countries don't view it as "an intelligence agency" but rather as a drug fighting force. That has helped the NSA piggyback on the DEA for access in multiple countries.

Also, of interest, is the fact that, while the Bahamas is considered a popular place for money laundering and financial institutions to hide taxes, the NSA doesn't seem even remotely interested in that kind of law breaking. Because why bother taking on real crimes when you can focus on busting pot dealers: Somehow, this kind of stuff doesn't make me feel any safer, as the NSA and its defenders insist. It makes me feel the opposite.

Filed Under: all calls, bahamas, dea, drug war, kenya, mexico, mystic, nsa, parallel construction, philippines, recordings, surveillance

What If You Gave A (Drug) War And Nobody Came? Deputies Answer Rhetorical Question With Planted Evidence

from the internal-affairs-notes-crime-numbers-are-on-the-rise dept

Crime numbers are down. Police militarization is up. The War on Drugs continues to be fought with as much intensity as ever even as the country sides with legalization. So, when a lack of crime meets budgets, weaponry and expectations -- all primed for battle -- what's a poor law enforcement officer to do?

Former deputies Julio Cesar Martinez, 39, and Anthony Manuel Paez, 32, have been charged with two felony counts of conspiring to obstruct justice and altering evidence, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office. Martinez faces two additional felony counts of perjury and filing a false report.

The two deputies had already had one charge -- possession of ecstasy -- but that apparently wasn't enough. Why settle for a low ball possession charge when you can add months or years to the sentence?

Before he got a search warrant, Martinez kicked a wall outlet and shut down power to the room, according to the complaint. Paez then allegedly opened a drawer, pulled out a gun and put it on a chair.

The complaint alleges Paez also planted a gun on top of an office desk, next to some ecstasy pills. At some point, Paez allegedly crawled under the desk and disabled the security camera system.

This led to Yang being charged with "possessing ecstasy in the presence of a firearm" (firearms are apparently very impressionable...), to which he pleaded no contest. Another person was charged with possession of an unregistered handgun.

One year later, after Yang had already served his sentence, Internal Affairs discovered the video from inside the pot dispensary was "inconsistent" with filed reports. Or worded more accurately, the deputies' reports weren't backed up by the unblinking security camera. The unnamed "suspect" was cut loose. Yang, however, had already spent several months in jail, time the Sheriff's Department can't give back to him. Both officers face up to seven years in jail if found guilty and are currently out on $50,000 bail pending arraignment.

Is this an outlier, one of the exceptions to the rule? Probably. But there seems to be way too many of these "exceptions."

A police car dash cam captured Santa Clara deputies plotting to plant drugs in a woman’s home after their first illegal search turned up nothing, the woman claims in court.

Allison Ross, who was arrested after the second search of her home, sued the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department, its crime lab, Sheriff Laurie Smith, and 12 of her officers, in Federal Court.

Once again, officers primed for the "War" found themselves faced with a dearth of combatants. No drugs and nothing to do but walk away empty-handed. For some reason, these deputies believed a lack of criminal activity would somehow be marked up as a loss in the War on Drugs. So, they decided to make a second "search" of the premises, this time while the fix was in.

Deputies then re-entered the home and ransacked it, opening and rummaging through drawers in the bedrooms and kitchens. They placed personal property from around the house into one area in an effort to make it appear that the items were in plain sight, the complaint states...

Because the deputies failed to find any drugs in the home, "they planted narcotics which were kept in one of the sheriff's vehicles. Statements to this effect can be heard over the vehicle dash camera on one of the defendant's vehicles," the lawsuit states...

[T[he officers are heard on the recording saying: 'the house is clean, there is no meth in the house', 'we're gonna spike that and we're gonna spike him.' 'I got the meth in the ——- car,'" the complaint states.

These LEOs must be learning from their FBI heroes. If criminal activity fails to present itself, feel free to manufacture it. Of course, the FBI's tactics are a bit more subtle and require months of leading the easily-led until they've fallen into the agency's "terrorism" traps.

These deputies apparently didn't have the time or willingness to play the long con. They had made two (apparently illegal) sweeps and still hadn't come up with anything actionable. So, they took it upon themselves to "find" the justification they needed for their actions.

Another outlier? Sure, if you still have an inordinate amount of faith in your fellow human beings and believe law enforcement officers are less likely to be swayed by perverse incentives than, say, the guy a couple of cubicles over. But humans do human things, and those with a lot of power and very little accountability do human things that seriously damage other humans. And they do it more often than we'd hope, as Radley Balko points out.

And it certainly wouldn't be the first time drug cops have been caught doing so. Nor would it be the first time a crime lab analyst has been caught faking the results of drug tests.

We know cops lie and that judges oblige them. Planting evidence is a physical lie and it's just as simple (simpler, even) as looking the defendant in the eye and telling him or her, along with the assembled court, things the person facing months or years in prison knows aren't true. And then going back to work, secure in the knowledge that if the suspect wasn't exactly guilty of what you claimed, they were probably guilty of something. They all are, even the ones that aren't -- and the cops have the tools, ability and access to ensure the "evidence" is exactly where it needs to be to make the charges stick.

Filed Under: drug war, planted evidence, police

Other Government Agencies Wanted Access To NSA Surveillance Data For Other Investigations... Including Copyright Infringement

from the seriously-now? dept

Going all the way back to 2010, we've talked many times about how much of the "debate" over "cybersecurity" was really a kind of turf war between the Defense Department (really, the NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security, over who would control both the budgets and the information they were collecting. So it should come as little surprise to see the NY Times reporting that this turf war has been playing out behind the scenes with various other government agencies demanding access to all that sweet, sweet data it has on everyone for whatever their personal area of interest was -- including:

...drug trafficking, cyberattacks, money laundering, counterfeiting and even copyright infringement

To its credit (and I can't believe I'm saying that), it appears that the NSA has rejected most of these requests, saying that those other issues are not high enough of a priority and they don't want to violate privacy rights (don't laugh). Still, given how much pressure is coming from other agencies of the government, you have to expect that sooner or later the NSA will be pressured into opening up the data to other parts of the government. In fact, part of the concern about CISPA and other cybsersecurity legislation wasn't just that it would put the NSA in control over such information, but that it also made it clear that government agencies would be free to share that data with each other, for almost any investigative purpose.

And, of course, that brings us to the "copyright infringement" bit. It's no secret that different parts of the government -- including the DOJ and ICE (a part of Homeland Security) have taken it upon themselves to act as if copyright infringement is a huge problem that they, personally, need to stop. The idea that agencies are even seeking access to the NSA's data to deal with copyright infringement claims shows just how incredibly obsessed they are. Copyright shouldn't even involve federal law enforcement in the first place, as it really should only be about civil cases between private parties. It was troubling enough that the government was deputizing itself to be copyright cops -- but to find out that they also wanted to use the data the NSA collects (which is already of questionable legality) in order to further work on their copyright obsession is downright ridiculous.

Filed Under: copyright infringement, dhs, doj, drug war, nsa, nsa surveillance, surveillance data