
CIA Agents Were Embedded With NYPD And Had “No Limits” - eightyone
http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/06/28/cia-agents-were-embedded-with-nypd-and-had-no-limits/
======
tptacek
You see things like this all the time, where some government functionary
declares something manifestly retarded to be true, and the statement is then
taken on faith by (the media, message boards, politicians).

The best example of this I can think of is the "100 mile from the border
Constitution-free zone", which was the stated position of some moron at DHS
that was then (maddeningly, given how great they normally are) picked up by
the ACLU. In reality, the notion that there's a 100 mile zone of warrantless
personal searches extending inward from every border was a notion that was
litigated by SCOTUS in the '70s and, obviously, found wanting.

I would support a public policy that would make statements of this sort ("the
CIA has no limits when working with the NYPD!", "We can ghost your laptop as
long as you're within 100 miles of any airport!") a firing offense, but short
of that, there's not a lot you can do about this problem; if the USG employed
1/4th the number of people it does now, that'd still be over a million people,
and no group of one million people can possibly avoid a couple crazy people.

The real check on this sort of stupidity is the courts.

~~~
smokeyj
Would it make sense for courts to sign off on regulations _before_ they're
enacted? This is like an engineer throwing code into production only to test
it after enough customers complain.

~~~
tptacek
Every time you see a proposal that suggests increasing the power of the
courts, remember that federal judges aren't elected, and we're not a nation
governed by a panel of philosopher-kings. The courts are already _very_
powerful.

~~~
LowKarmaAccount
Tuesday's _Shelby County v. Holder_ decision, which struck down part of the
Voting Rights Act, was a power grab by the court majority that strayed wildly
from precedent. From SCOTUS blog:

"Regarding deference, not that long ago, the Justices believed Congress held
something close to plenary power when it crafted remedies addressing racial
discrimination in voting. In case after case, the Justices made clear that
they would not second-guess congressional judgments on the subject. Even as
the Justices began looking more rigorously at particular types of
congressional remedial action elsewhere, they repeatedly distinguished the
invalidated laws from the VRA and celebrated provisions like preclearance as
paradigmatic examples of permissible congressional action...

"The decision significantly diminishes Congress’s ability to craft future
remedies for racial discrimination in voting and beyond. Indeed, after today,
an administrative agency acting within the sphere of its expertise enjoys more
discretion than does Congress when acting in the realm in which its power was
once viewed to be at its apogee.

"At oral argument last winter, Justice Kagan bristled at the notion that the
Court, rather than Congress, was the proper institution to decide when
remedial action in this realm was needed. Justice Scalia was nevertheless
convinced that “[t]his is not the kind of question you can leave to Congress.”
Today’s decision makes clear that a majority of the Court shares this view.
Earl Warren would have been astounded. William Rehnquist, too."

[http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/how-big-is-shelby-
county/#...](http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/how-big-is-shelby-
county/#more-165961)

~~~
tmuir
"The formula that was struck down identified jurisdictions subject to
preclearance as those with a history of a voting test or device and less than
50 percent voter registration or turnout as of 1964, 1968 or 1972."

[http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-
front/posts/2013/06/25-sup...](http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-
front/posts/2013/06/25-supreme-court-voting-rights-act-mann-wakeman)

The decision hinged upon this very narrow point. Congress' decision to require
preclearance was not declared unconstitutional on its own. The problem was
that the formula for deciding who required preclearance is a static rule that
does not allow for the evaluation of any events after 1972. Therefore,
regardless of how much a state or other jurisdiction changes, they could not
change their status under this law. If they were originally on the
preclearance list, never had another voting anomaly, elected minorities to
every position in the state, and had 100% minority turnout, for decades on
end, they would remain on the preclearance list, because of what happened 40
years ago.

Chief Justice John Roberts even wrote in his opinion that congress is free to
make new legislation that has the same consequences. But it must rely on
current data to evaluate jurisdictions.

~~~
LowKarmaAccount
> The problem was that the formula for deciding who required preclearance is a
> static rule that does not allow for the evaluation of any events after 1972.
> Therefore, regardless of how much a state or other jurisdiction changes,
> they could not change their status under this law. If they were originally
> on the preclearance list, never had another voting anomaly, elected
> minorities to every position in the state, and had 100% minority turnout,
> for decades on end, they would remain on the preclearance list, because of
> what happened 40 years ago.

That's simply not true. You can seek exemption from section 5. It's called
"bailing out". A county or state on the preclearance list that has not been
discriminatory for 10 years (see [1] for criteria) may sue to be exempt from
Section 5. Many counties have done this successfully; the state of New
Hampshire successfully bailed out as recently as this March.

States or counties that were found to be discriminatory could also be "bailed
in." Arkansas and New Mexico, LA County in California, as well as several
other counties were bailed in.

In other words, the Voting Rights Act was built with a mechanism to self-
destruct when it was no longer necessary. Congress overwhelmingly approved an
extension of the VRA in 2006 after extensive research and testimony. If a
state or county was still covered in 2013, then it had a problem with
discrimination within the past ten years, which is the minority thought the
opinion that "things have changed" was foolish.

[http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/misc/sec_4.php](http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/vot/misc/sec_4.php)

------
cobrausn
So, theoretical surveillance state nightmare for an average citizen:

You violate some law online (knowingly or unknowingly, doesn't matter), and
the NSA records it and flags it for later review based on some pattern
matching. Upon review, it gets forwarded (at the discretion of an agent who
will make his determination with little oversight) to an embedded CIA agent in
your local PD. Forbidden from operating against you themselves by federal law,
they inform the local PD of the problem and you get a SWAT team at your house
at 2am.

I don't think we are there yet, but I'm actually not convinced that the
average American will see this as a problem - after all, they have nothing to
hide.

~~~
temp453463343
Wouldn't the PD need to show in court why they suspected you in the first
place? If their raid is based on illegal info, then it's not legal.

Turning secret inadmissible evidence into legal admissible evidence seems
tricky.

The only game plan I can see is this: You find out someone is up to something
illegal; then you just happen have have a police officer walking by the coffee
shop when you're discussing it with an associate.

~~~
nullc
> Wouldn't the PD need to show in court why they suspected you in the first
> place?

No, not really. They have to show e.g. probable cause but they can happily use
secret information to create serendipity: "We happened to be parked outside
the suspect's location at just the right time to wittiness them talking to a
known communist sympathizer."

Its not unusual for information from paid informants to get washed in this way
in order to conceal their identity and prolong their usefulness.

~~~
temp453463343
Yeah, but that's often hard to pull off.

For instance in the original example you're violating an internet law. It's
not exactly something the PD can just pretend to stumble upon unless you're
really careless and do it in a public place.

------
rayiner
Headline is misleading. From the article:

"That officer believed there were 'no limitations' on his activities, the
report said, because he was on an unpaid leave of absence, and thus exempt
from the prohibition against domestic spying by members of the C.I.A."

~~~
ferdo
It's not misleading. If the CIA agent believed that he had no limits, then
there were no limits.

~~~
rayiner
If we're pretending to be severely brain-damaged to the point where we can't
see the difference between different things, then yes, the title is totally
accurate.

~~~
ferdo
When someone acting under color of law "believes" himself to be without
limits, there's no difference.

The brain damage is displayed by those who keep giving authoritarians the
benefit of the doubt.

------
spoiledtechie
What you see here is a blatant disregard for the CIA's Direct Guidelines.

Whats gonna happen next? Well thats up to you. How many more times are you
going to let government entities operate outside their defined jurisdictions
and boundaries?

Honestly?

~~~
anigbrowl
According to the recently declassified IG's report (on which this story is
based), that doesn't seem to be the case. Could you explain specifically what
you're referring to?

[https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/717864-cia-nypd-
ig.h...](https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/717864-cia-nypd-ig.html)

~~~
spoiledtechie
The guidelines that the CIA operates outside of the USA. Not within.

Even if a document was declassified, when will you believe things and not
believe things.

Do you think this could just be a document the government is feeding us
compared to actual witnesses? Cops are expected to tell the truth even in
court. So I guess this begs the question who is really telling the truth.

Point is, the government overall just can't be trusted to keep a straight
answer.

------
gasull
Related:

 _Revealed: how the FBI coordinated the crackdown on Occupy_

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-
coor...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/29/fbi-coordinated-
crackdown-occupy)

~~~
Amadou
Ever since the publication of the NSA leaks I've been wondering if any of the
NSA intel has been used to disrupt Occupy. With the well established lack of
actual terrorists, it doesn't take much to imagine a bit of scope creep /
budget justification for Occupy to have been classified as potential
terrorists and thus in need of monitoring.

Once they started going over the collected data, how much further to
specifically target key organizers? It could have been through blackmail (ala
FBI's threatening letter to MLK) or just simply hyper-vigilant enforcement of
all laws made so much easier thanks to the constant surveillance the NSA can
provide.

------
DanielBMarkham
This discussion on the NSA/CIA/DOJ/etc is teetering on the edge of
respectability. Now every Tom, Dick, and Harry with an axe to grind is out
running around yelling about some new abuse -- even if the story is a bit
thin.

As tptacek says, this isn't a new thing. It's not even something that's all
that interesting, frankly. People from various agencies cross-pollinate all of
the time. If worked a boring analyst job at CIA, I might love taking a leave
of absence and helping the cops out some. Sounds like fun.

Sure, it would be news if the CIA actually ran operations in NYC, but this
story is about employees of the CIA being embedded in the NYC police, not
about secret CIA operations inside the country. That's a different can of
worms. Perhaps something bad happened. Don't know. This story doesn't inform
us of it. Instead we just get vague allegations without proof. As the report
states, this is an unusual _personnel situation_ , not some massive policy
disaster. The rest of it is just blown out of proportion by this author.

I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: the biggest problem
with these freedom or safety stories is that people get way too passionate,
try to interject their own narrative about how things work, lay on the
paranoia thickly, and have a good old Donnybrook. Might get a lot of page
views like that, but it's not useful.

People should be really concerned about what's going on in the US with regards
to the security state. This is a serious problem and it deserves our passion.
But "being concerned" and "having your chain yanked" are two different things.
Smart folks know the difference. I'm not pointing a finger at this author
precisely, but I'm starting to see a lot of overly-emotional, hand-waving
tripe coming across the wires in the guise of various kinds of "breaking
stories"

------
quackerhacker
_National Security Act of 1947 explicitly forbid the CIA from conducting
domestic surveillance_

To me, this is actually a little confusing. My assumption has always been that
the CIA was the intelligence agency which...gathers intelligence. If the
government itself is forbidding them from domestic surveillance, it makes me
question their tactics and methods that would be unconstitutional...I guess it
could be that this is suppose to be the work of the DHS and NSA.

~~~
drawkbox
FBI handles that internally in the US, CIA externally to the US. NSA handles
both in terms of gathering and intelligence mainly for both. DHS is primarily
Coast Guard, Border Patrol, specific police/fire personnel etc.

It is smart to divide them up really, the idea is they communicate with one
another and provide some checks on each other. There is also the DIA primarily
intelligence for the military. There have been some CIA and DIA butting heads
after 9/11.

~~~
quackerhacker
I was actually guessing that it had to be a way to better allocate government
resources.

