Congress Asks Eric Holder To Explain Why NSA Supplies DEA Info Which It Then Launders To Go After Americans

from the about-time dept

A few weeks back, Reuters broke the news that the NSA (and other intelligence agencies) were funneling information to the DEA, IRS and others, telling them about potential wrongdoing, but then also telling them to effectively launder the information, so that it never came out where they got the information from, and that it didn't show up in any court case. For example, they might send info to the DEA about a likely drug deal, and the DEA would then tell its agents that they should come up with a pretense to stop a certain truck at a certain truck stop at a certain time. The agents would work with local police to concoct a reason to pull the truck over, and voila, drugs found. But, most importantly, at no point would the fact that such information was used to lead to the stop be revealed, and that's unconstitutional. If you're accused, you're supposed to have access to all of the evidence being used against you.

It appears that a bunch of folks in Congress want some answers about this program, and so Eric Holder has been sent yet another letter with questions from a bunch of Senators and Representatives, and there will be yet another briefing where I'm sure he'll promise a full investigation into the practice and maybe promise some internal changes to guidelines, but where nothing will actually change. It really does seem like a very significant portion of Eric Holder's job these days is to respond to the latest scandal of government overreach by promising that he'll fix it, and nothing much ever seems to change.

Filed Under: congress, dea, eric holder, irs, nsa, sod

Was DEA's Fake Claims Of Not Being Able To Intercept iMessages Part Of Evidence Laundering Efforts?

from the questions,-questions dept

We recently covered the story of how the DEA's "Special Operations Division" (SOD) was getting information from various intelligence agencies -- including the NSA, FBI and CIA -- and was using that to alert DEA, IRS and other government officials of investigations they might want to do, without revealing too many details. Those agencies were then told to "launder" (i.e., manufacture evidence) the information to pretend that they'd discovered any criminal activity through other means. As an example, it was discussed how the SOD might tell DEA agents to look for "a certain kind of truck" at a specific truck stop. The DEA would then get local police to come up with some random traffic law reason to stop the truck, and have that turn into a search. And, then, of course during discovery the defense is never told how the government knew to stop the truck, because they'll claim it was just a "random traffic stop." That's almost certainly unconstitutional.

However, I was recently reminded of a story from just a few months before all of these revelations started coming out -- in which a DEA memo was "leaked," in which the DEA complains that Apple's iMessage encryption had "stymied" DEA agents from being able to spy on conversations. Except, as many people noted, this was clearly not true, because the iMessage encryption is not truly end-to-end. Apple holds the key itself, so the DEA can easily get the decrypted messages via Apple. Most of the assumptions were that this bogus memo was leaked either to try to get even more legal justification for requiring back doors in all communications technology, or to try to lull drug runners into believing iMessage was safe when it's clearly not.

Of course, now I'm wondering if there's even more to it: given that it's now been confirmed that DEA staff have been told to fake things to cover up where investigations originated, perhaps the letter was part of a laundering effort to hide the fact that some key breaks came from decrypted iMessage conversations that the government had been snooping through...

Filed Under: dea, encryption, imessages, laundering, nsa, sod

IRS Also Secretly Got Intelligence Info And Was Told To Launder It

from the this-isn't-going-to-end-well dept

Reuters continues to reveal incredible details of how the intelligence community (NSA, FBI, CIA, etc.) has been sharing information with other government agencies -- mainly via the DEA's Special Operations Division (SOD) and then telling those who use that info to do law enforcement work to "launder" their own investigation to hide where they got the information from. The example given was that, perhaps, the FBI or the NSA might provide the SOD with information about a truck likely to have drugs. SOD then tells other DEA agents to look for "this kind of truck in this truck stop," and then the DEA has local police stop the truck on a traffic violation, leading to a "random" search and voila, drug trafficker arrested.

The latest is that apparently, the DEA's SOD isn't just giving this info to DEA agents... but also to other agencies, including the IRS, who is again instructed to "launder" where the evidence came from in order to hide that it was the result of intelligence gathering.

A 350-word entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents of the U.S. tax agency to omit any reference to tips supplied by the DEA's Special Operations Division, especially from affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files. The entry was published and posted online in 2005 and 2006, and was removed in early 2007. The IRS is among two dozen arms of the government working with the Special Operations Division, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.

An IRS spokesman had no comment on the entry or on why it was removed from the manual. Reuters recovered the previous editions from the archives of the Westlaw legal database, which is owned by Thomson Reuters Corp, the parent of this news agency.

This is almost certainly unconstitutional, as a due process violation, by hiding the evidence used to arrest someone. Furthermore, even if you think that it's reasonable that if the FBI or NSA comes across some details of, say, a tax cheat or a drug deal, that they should pass that info along to a relevant agency, at best you could make an argument that this made sense when those investigations were narrow and targeted at wrongdoing. Yet, as we've seen, surveillance capabilities for both the NSA and FBI have been expanding rapidly, such that nowadays they're collecting information on absolutely everyone. When you have information on everyone, it's not hard to construct "patterns" that can be passed along to various agencies for the purpose of directly targeting individuals. The risk of abuse of this kind of information gathering and information sharing is tremendous.

Filed Under: constitution, dea, due process, evidence, irs, sod, surveillance

Now That It's Been Exposed, DOJ Plans To 'Review' Information Sharing With DEA

from the oh-sure,-now-they-review-it dept

Earlier this week, Reuters revealed that the various intelligence agencies give the DEA info through its SOD -- Special Operations Division -- and then DEA agents are instructed to "launder" where they got the info from, so they don't have to reveal to the people they arrest how they were caught. This is almost certainly illegal, as the discovery process is pretty clear that the government needs to turn over its evidence. In the article, DEA officials seemed almost cavalier about the whole thing, noting that they'd been doing it for decades. Of course, now that it's public, it took all of a day for the DOJ -- which clearly has known about this all along -- to say that it's now reviewing the program:

The Justice Department is reviewing a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit that passes tips culled from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a large telephone database to field agents, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Reuters also points out that the DEA officials they had interviewed claimed that the DOJ had reviewed the program regularly, and deemed it legal. The fact that the DOJ is suddenly kicking off a new "investigation" the day after the program becomes public is really questionable -- but par for the course. Over the last few months, as we've seen revelation after revelation of very questionable law enforcement and data collection practices by the government, each time we're first told this is "no big deal" and then when the feds realize that no one's buying that, suddenly they need to "review" the program.

Gee... it's kind of like when they keep all this stuff totally secret, it doesn't receive the level of scrutiny that it really needs, huh?

Filed Under: dea, doj, due process, information sharing, sod

DEA Not Only Gets Intelligence Data, But Then Is Instructed To Cover Up Where It Gets The Info

from the wow dept

Okay, so we were just talking about other government agencies wanting data from the NSA. The NY Times story claimed that the NSA was regularly turning down such requests. Except... this morning Reuters broke the news that the NSA, along with the CIA, FBI, IRS and Homeland Security, are actually funneling data to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and (even worse) the DEA is then instructed to lie about where it gets the evidence.

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."

As the article notes, the DEA doesn't just hide the actual details from those they're prosecuting, but even from judges and US attorneys in the Justice Department. Basically, it looks like the NSA is illegally giving the DEA info, and then the DEA is figuring out ways to pretend it got that info from legal sources. That goes way, way, way beyond what is supposed to be happening.

"Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function," a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD's involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use "normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD."

And this isn't just for extreme cases either. Reuters says that two separate senior DEA officials said that this technique "is used almost daily." As the Reuters report explains, the info from the NSA might, for example, highlight a particular vehicle that may be involved in a drug effort (remember, the NSA isn't supposed to collect or look at info on things happening in the US), and then DEA officials will be told something like "look for this vehicle in this place." The DEA will then ask "state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle," leading to a search. Then they later claim that the arrest and finding drugs came because of a "routine traffic stop" rather than NSA surveillance dragnet efforts.

There's a lot more in the article, including a variety of DEA officials insisting that there's nothing wrong with this sort of thing... balanced out by a variety of defense attorneys pointing out that it's unconstitutional to hide where information for an investigation came from. It is a fundamental aspect of basic due process that those accused of crimes get the details of the evidence and the investigation that lead to their arrests. That the DEA appears to be actively covering up this information, and that it's been standard operating procedure for decades, is immensely troubling.

Filed Under: cia, cover up, dea, drug enforcement, fbi, nsa, sod, surveillance