NSA sharing data with DEA to catch drug dealers

[The Situation]

Wow, that was quick. I thought it would take maybe a few years before this gross violation of privacy extends beyond "national security", a term which I already find very overarching.

The NSA is giving your phone records to the DEA. And the DEA is covering it up.

By Brian Fung, Published: August 5 at 10:06 am

A day after we learned of a draining turf battle between the NSA and other law enforcement agencies over bulk surveillance data, it now appears that those same agencies are working together to cover up when those data get shared.

The Drug Enforcement Administration has been the recipient of multiple tips from the NSA. DEA officials in a highly secret office called the Special Operations Division are assigned to handle these incoming tips, according to Reuters. Tips from the NSA are added to a DEA database that includes “intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records.” This is problematic because it appears to break down the barrier between foreign counterterrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations.

Because the SOD’s work is classified, DEA cases that began as NSA leads can’t be seen to have originated from a NSA source.

So what does the DEA do? It makes up the story of how the agency really came to the case in a process known as “parallel construction.” Reuters explains:

Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using “parallel construction” may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.

The report makes no explicit connection between the DEA and the earlier NSA bulk phone surveillance uncovered by former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor Edward Snowden. In other words, we don’t know for sure if the DEA’s Special Operations Division is getting its tips from the same database that’s been the subject of multiple congressional hearings in recent months. We just know that a special outfit within DEA sometimes gets tips from the NSA.

There’s another reason the DEA would rather not admit the involvement of NSA data in its investigations: It might lead to a constitutional challenge to the very law that gave rise to the evidence.

Earlier this year, a federal court said that if law enforcement agencies wanted to use NSA information in court, they had to say so beforehand and give the defendant a chance to contest the legality of the surveillance. Lawyers for Adel Daoud, who was arrested in a federal sting operation and charged with trying to detonate a bomb, suspect that Daoud was identified using NSA information but was never told.

Surveys show most people support the NSA’s bulk surveillance program strongly when the words “terrorism” or “courts” are included in the question. When pollsters draw no connection with terrorism, support tends to wane. What will happen when the question makes clear that the intelligence not only isn’t being used for terrorism investigations against foreign agents, but is actively being applied to criminal investigations against Americans?

http://www.washingto...covering-it-up/

[The Situation]

And now the IRS is joining in on the fun.

IRS gets help from DEA and NSA to collect data

The Internal Revenue Service reportedly received incriminating information on US citizens from the Drug Enforcement Agency, with the assistance of the National Security Agency, before concealing the paper trail from defendants.

Details of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) program that provides tips to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and then advises them to “recreate the investigative trail” were published in a manual used by IRS agents for two years, Reuters revealed.

The practice of concealing the source of information has attracted the scrutiny of legal experts and is now under review by the US Justice Department.

A brief entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents of the US tax agency to omit any reference to information provided by the DEA's Special Operations Division, especially with regard to “affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files.”

The entry was published and posted online in 2005 and 2006, and removed in early 2007. An IRS spokesman had no comment on the entry or on why it was removed from the manual, Reuters reported.

The IRS publication provides some further detail on the parallel construction concept.

"Special Operations Division has the ability to collect, collate, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate information and intelligence derived from worldwide multi-agency sources, including classified projects," the IRS manual says. "SOD converts extremely sensitive information into usable leads and tips which are then passed to the field offices for real-time enforcement activity against major international drug trafficking organizations."

According to the document, IRS agents are directed to use the intelligence as a starting point for unearthing new, "independent" evidence: "Usable information regarding these leads must be developed from such independent sources as investigative files, subscriber and toll requests, physical surveillance, wire intercepts, and confidential source information. Information obtained from SOD in response to a search or query request cannot be used directly in any investigation (i.e. cannot be used in affidavits, court proceedings or maintained in investigative files)."

In addition to the IRS, the Special Operations Division cooperates with a number of government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.

The way the intelligence-gathering system worked is as follows: The Special Operations Division of the DEA channels secret data from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to assist them with criminal investigations of US citizens, according to the Reuters report.

The DEA telephone database is different from the NSA database that was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is now living in Russia under asylum.

The DEA, which works behind the scenes to investigate drug dealers, money launderers and other criminals, argues that the practice does not violate the law and has been in “near-daily use since the 1990s.” The agency said the reason it directs federal agents to recreate the investigation trail is to “protect sources and methods, not to withhold evidence.”

Judicial hurdles ahead

Legal experts, however, say that concealing potential evidence from defendants violates the US Constitution. According to documents and interviews obtained by Reuters, federal agents use a procedure called "parallel construction" to conceal the tracks of the investigative trail. For example, agents could say that an investigation was launched due to a traffic violation as opposed to an SOD tip.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers expressed concern with the parallel construction program.

"If they're recreating a trail, that's wrong and we're going to have to do something about it," Rogers, a former FBI agent, said on the Mike Huckabee Show radio program. "We're working with the DEA and intelligence organizations to try to find out exactly what that story is."

Spokespeople for the DEA and the Department of Justice declined to comment.

Sen. Rand Paul, a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said he was troubled that DEA agents have been "trying to cover up a program that investigates Americans."

"If the Constitution still has any sway, a government that is constantly overreaching on security while completely neglecting liberty is in grave violation of our founding doctrine," Paul added

The NSA database contains data about every telephone call made inside of the United States. This information, according to a NSA official, as quoted by Reuters, “is not used for domestic criminal law enforcement.”

The DEA database, or DICE for short, consists largely of phone log and internet data gathered legally by the DEA through “subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide.” DICE has on file “about 1 billion records,” which are stored for about one year before being destroyed, DEA officials said.

http://rt.com/usa/dea-nsa-irs-snowden-216/

[etsen3]

These guys are scum. The people let it happen though by trusting the government and buying into the propaganda.

[elvis15]

If anyone actually thought they wouldn't use other information they found illegally in cases against Americans (and others) not related to terrorism. If you're willing to accept one, you have to accept at least the probability of others.

[The Situation]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0RYMxcTkTsA