
The terrifying surveillance case of Brandon Mayfield - jpatokal
http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/2/the-terrifying-surveillancecaseofbrandonmayfield.html
======
atlantic
There isn't a name for the political system we find ourselves in at the
moment. It works like this: you free to act as you wish as long as you respect
a series of red lines that are never clearly formulated. All these red lines
pertain to making changes of substance in the dominant political and economic
system.

If you do cross over them, then you find yourself inside the prison system, in
a psychiatric ward, or simply disappeared altogether. If large numbers of
people cross these lines at once, I suspect we will find ourselves overnight
in a totalitarian system, since all the tools for mass control of the
population are already in place.

~~~
tbastos
I propose we call it a Techno-Militarized Surveillance-and-Incarceration
Pseudo-Democratic State. Here are the basics on how to create one:

1) Education: provide a relatively weak public education system that teaches
patriotism and not a lot about the rest of the world, so the masses are easier
to fool. At the same time, have the best graduate schools in the world so you
can have the best scientists and engineers (and technology).

2) Media: have a few corporations control 90% of your media. Make them work
for you by providing news and shows that distract the masses from political
topics, and at the same time instil fear in their hearts. Fear is very
important for mass control. If possible, promote capitalist ideals such as
meritocracy, free market, working hard, consumption, etc. through your media
and school system.

3) Industries: your most important industries are armaments and defence
technology, though your prison industry also plays a strategic role. Focus on
having a steady flow of wars, preferably in unfamiliar faraway countries. But
throw in a few domestic wars too, especially on "drugs"\---to promote fear,
help you with your prison industry and keep the masses away from the dangerous
"psychedelics" that could make people question things. Use fear to gain power
and reduce civil rights, then use your more rigorous laws and militarized
police to keep the people in line and the prisons full.

4) Intelligence: your intelligence agencies work behind curtains to keep the
system working in harmony and further the "national interests", using
surveillance and their access to power---and the tools of fear, ignorance and
propaganda---to make the masses work for the system while believing they are
free and living in a true democracy. Beautiful.

Of course, these are not an US exclusive, many other countries are trying the
same tricks, but it seems the US is far in the lead...

~~~
fennecfoxen
The US public education system really isn't doing a grand job teaching
"patriotism" per se. Public school teachers, taken as a group nationwide, are
notorious for being left-wing (and pro-union, and such.) The left wing has
kind of been been down on Patriotism since around Vietnam or so, with only a
brief interlude around Sep. 2001 through 2003 or so.

Oh, sure, there are regional variations and exceptions, but Texas is probably
the only one with a population behind it worth counting.

~~~
lostlogin
I know someone who was suspended from school in Virginia 5-10 years ago for
refusing to sing the national anthem. He was Scottish, yet was expected to
howl along with the rest. Just standing up, hand on heart wasn't enough. Just
an anecdata point.

------
pmorici
"The only reason Mayfield is a free man today is that the Spanish police
repeatedly told the FBI that the print recovered from the bag of detonators
didn’t match Mayfield’s fingerprints. The FBI, however, continued to stand by
its lab’s findings until Spanish authorities conclusively matched the print to
the real culprit"

Even if you are hardline nut and totally support the surveillance state it has
to be frightening alarming that they were so dead set on harassing this one
guy that they would have let the real culprit go free had the Spanish police
not called them on their BS.

~~~
javajosh
I would wager money that there are many FBI agents to this day who lament that
they let Mayfield get away with his crimes.

~~~
mox1
I would wager money that there are just as many FBI agents who to this day are
disgusted by what the idiots at the Portland Field Office of the FBI did to
this guy.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
Those agents need to speak up. They especially need to speak up when they
observe their colleagues conducting themselves as the article describes.

~~~
deegles
I don't think there will be much love for whistleblowers at any federal agency
in the post-Snowden era.

------
Broken_Hippo
Horrifying story that will change absolutely nothing. The government isn't
willing to back away from the power (even after it became known) and people
aren't upset enough in mass to actually do things about it - things that would
probably be done in vain for some time. And changing the minds of many people
in the 'innocent people have nothing to hide' I find to have a general
delusion, believing the government (or at least the law) is mostly infallible.

It is not a new pattern, either. Look back to what we (americans) did to each
other in the 50's (are You a communist? Do you act like one?). Had we had the
tech then to spy like now, we'd have done so. Which means that despite the
sensational news stories, I find almost apathy from normal people I meet - the
paranoid has known for years (don't talk on that cell phone, they can listen
in on those easily... does anyone remember this attitude?). Privacy intrusions
simply exist. They are. You aren't escaping them. It might make one angry, but
there is nothing people feel they can do about it. I personally disagree, but
also feel the path to balance in this area is an uncomfortable one.

~~~
nhaehnle
I disagree. Every such story has the potential to make people re-think their
false belief that "I've got nothing to hide".

I for one have added it to my list of bookmarks, and hope I remember to pass
it on when somebody downplays the dangers of surveillance the next time.

Ultimately, scaling back the mass surveillance state can only be done using
popular support. Stories like this one are the best way to get that support,
because they are concrete evidence of its danger (rather than the abstract
worries that are usually repeated).

There's a difference between reading 1984 and seeing articles of how things
play out in real life in your own country.

~~~
Ma8ee
> I disagree. Every such story has the potential to make people re-think their
> false belief that "I've got nothing to hide".

Most people will easily rationalize this away and just think that he was a
Muslim after all. Good Christians don't have to worry about a thing (except
Muslim terrorists of course).

~~~
zachinglis
Where are you getting these 'facts' about how people are going to behave from?

Truly, if it changes one person's mind then it's done some good. This alone
won't change anything but spreading this to allow people to see there are
kinks in the armour will allow people to perhaps vote in the future for
difference.

When the majority is against something, sometimes some good can be done. Not
always. The government is all powerful, but there is a chance.

~~~
Ma8ee
Why don't you ask nhaehnle where he/she gets her facts?

------
zacinbusiness
This is an excellent example of what I was talking about earlier. We have FBI
field agents, men and women who are so overly patriotic that it clouds their
rational judgement, men and women who are not trained to think rationally
about data and who probably have only a high school understanding of
statistics (if that), who are given access to massive amounts of data. They
take this data and they match it against a theory that they've already
developed, and they assume they have "cracked the case." They act in a
constant state of paranoia, fueled by fear and powered by tools that act on
data in ways that they can't possibly understand. And so they fill in some
(likely poorly designed) form in some FBI web app, and some names get spit
out. Then they look at whoever matches their "profile" which was likely
developed using, again, a high school level of psychology. It's ridiculous and
frightening.

~~~
d23
> We have FBI field agents, men and women who are so overly patriotic that it
> clouds their rational judgement, men and women who are not trained to think
> rationally about data and who probably have only a high school understanding
> of statistics (if that), who are given access to massive amounts of data.

Really though?

> The FBI’s Portland field office, however, used that fingerprint match to
> begin digging into Mayfield’s background. Certain details of the attorney’s
> life convinced the agents that they had their man. Mayfield had converted to
> Islam after meeting his wife, an Egyptian. He had represented one of the
> Portland Seven, a group of men who tried to travel to Afghanistan to fight
> for al Qaeda and the Taliban against U.S. and coalition forces in a child
> custody case. He also worshipped at the same mosque as the militants.

I can't help but think I would have fallen for the same conclusion.

~~~
scotty79
> I can't help but think I would have fallen for the same conclusion.

That's because confirmation bias is a human and common thing. Scientists have
various tools to avoid fooling themselves like FBI did and like you and many
of us would do.

------
zb
Possibly the worst part: the courts ruled that what they did to him was
unconstitutional (duh), but that it's perfectly OK to keep doing it to other
people because he already got his payout:

[http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2009/12/mayfield-v-
us...](http://blogs.findlaw.com/ninth_circuit/2009/12/mayfield-v-us-
no-07-35865.html)

~~~
Zigurd
If the individual agents and prosecutors were bonded for the purpose of
funding liability like this, we would know the cost of liability up front, and
it would make it difficult for the same individuals to be involved in many
such cases. Making the government as a whole pay is too diffuse.

------
jessaustin
_One of the examiners candidly admitted that if the person identified had been
someone without these characteristics, like the Maytag repairman, the
laboratory might have revisited the identification with more skepticism and
caught the error._

I know We're All Bayesian Now, but does this really seem like the way a
"laboratory" ought to work? If fingerprinting really is a science, then it's a
study of patterns and how they do or do not match. I'm pretty sure we have
computers for that sort of task. Why isn't this totally automated by now? From
the outside, the reason that springs to mind is because fingerprinting, as
practiced by the FBI, is not scientific at all, and exists merely as window-
dressing for the prejudice and misjudgment of agents.

~~~
aestra
[http://science.howstuffworks.com/fingerprinting4.htm](http://science.howstuffworks.com/fingerprinting4.htm)

Fingerprint matching is automatically done by computers. The FBI has 1/6th of
the American population in its database. Prints found in the wild aren't
whole, the are usually partial prints. They ran the partials, found 20 people
who it could be from that database with whatever degree of probability,
probably very small. This of course was misused, but it wasn't the science was
wrong so to speak rather the humans utilizing it were wrong and acting without
good judgement and ethics.

~~~
jessaustin
The problem then is that the FBI laboratory, without consequence, utilizes the
science "without good judgement [sic] and ethics." Are there any forensic
laboratories in the USA that operate _with_ good judgment and ethics?

------
javajosh
No concerned citizen can allow themselves to be "terrified" by this story, if
only because terror is the death of rational, effective _action_. We must be
able to look at this situation, empathize with _both_ sides, and determine how
things could have gone better. (Empathizing with law enforcement is
particularly difficult for me, but I've come to realize that it is a crucial
part of the puzzle.)

It is normal for law-enforcement to chase down a false lead. Most leads are
dead-ends, from my lay understanding of detective work. In retrospect,
Mayfield was a dead-end, but the key question is: when should the FBI have
realized this? The actions that they took would have been justified, I think,
if their suspicions had turned out to be valid. (all except the 2 week
incarceration - and even that would have been clearly justified if Mayfield
had been charged.)

In any event, this is one of those cases which highlights a growing problem in
the US legal system, which is the redefinition of "punishment" to exclude pre-
trial incarceration and harassment. Law-enforcement has attained an ever
growing list of exceptions and ad hoc powers that override a man's right to a
fair trial before being punished. City police can "detain" you for up to 72
hours, for no reason. The FBI (apparently) can "detain" you for at least 2
weeks, again without charges. I believe that these rights to ad hoc, extra-
judicial incarceration need to be rescinded, by an act of Congress, as these
rights enable systematically arbitrary and abusive behavior on the part of
law-enforcement at both the local and federal level. I believe they make the
general population, whether they know it or not, unsafe from predatory police
behavior.

------
einhverfr
I don't see this as a question of confirmation bias but rather a more deeper
problem in investigative law enforcement, namely the need to see things as
part of a narrative relating to the sort of investigation. This isn't
confirmation bias as usually understood, but goes one step before, namely in
filtering out the details one can tell a story about.

In the end what criminal investigators do is they find details and piece
together a narrative from those. One huge problem with massive surveillance is
the ability to piece together whatever narrative the investigator wants to put
together based on a much larger field of information to mine.

------
revelation
The FBI is the modern day Gestapo, a bunch of poorly trained policemen with
the right ideology turned secret agency.

------
codex
Nobody is perfect and institutions are no exception. However, I'd have to see
more than a single datapoint to indite an entire system. Those who are anti-
surveillance will no doubt exhibit confirmation bias when reading this
article, which is ironic.

------
dllthomas
Cardinal Richelieu had something to say on the topic.

------
rikacomet
I think some of us are forgetting and are underestimating the human capacity
for compassion. This is not just about American public, but all of the humans.
What is struck between this uproar is the data security of all the 6billion+
people on this earth.If someone is to think, that it would be over, if they
just stop spying on American citizens and their activity, he is grossly
underestimating the rest of humanity, this wave won't end until lines are
drawn, about what is totalitarian and what is the right line of conformity.

Whats happening right now is a organization and its supporting organizations,
finding it hard to stay on the line of justice in a world, where America is a
small word, compared to what it was like before. Patriotism is nice, but it
has reduced meaning today, this is no longer a world, where you can stay
within your borders and hurt everybody outside it.

A good example, is from the movie Hobbit 2, where the elf king is reluctant to
look outside of his wooden kingdom.

With great power comes great responsibility.. if you have power over
Americans, you have responsibility over Americans, but in case of NSA, they
have power over the data of all the people, thus their responsibility is
towards everybody.

------
mjklin
>He spent two weeks in jail, petrified that fellow inmates would learn he was
somehow involved in the Madrid bombing and hurt him.

This is surprising to me, that he knew what he was being investigated for. Is
there any reason why they would tell him?

~~~
scotty79
So he can confess. You'll get confession you want more often if a person that
is supposed to confess knows what he's supposed to confess to.

------
Daniel_Newby
What, exactly, is terrifying? The FBI did an excellent job of making
connections between suspicious facts, the sort of connections that should have
been made to prevent the 9-11 attacks.

It is absurd to claim that this should not have happened. All detection
methods have a false positive rate. Judging by what has shown up in the media,
the FBI has a counterterrorism false positive rate of one person every few
years. That is a stupendously low rate for such a rare yet politically-charged
task.

Let's not forget their other famous false positive terrorism case: the anthrax
case. Their needle in a haystack search turned up a false positive, but it
also turned up the true positive.

The only terrifying thing here is that they suspected him of being a serial
mass murderer, and then proceeded to apply _such poor spycraft that a false
positive was spooked_. There are going to have a hard time catching real
baddies being that sloppy.

~~~
jpatokal
This is the part I find terrifying:

 _The only reason Mayfield is a free man today is that the Spanish police
repeatedly told the FBI that the print recovered from the bag of detonators
didn’t match Mayfield’s fingerprints. The FBI, however, continued to stand by
its lab’s findings until Spanish authorities conclusively matched the print to
the real culprit, Algerian national Ouhane Daoud._

That "only" is not rhetorical -- the guy would probably be entombed in a
supermax or frying in the electric chair if he had been flagged for a
terrorism case in the US, in which case the FBI would have had sole
jurisdiction and there would have been nobody with the power to say that a)
you guys are mistaken and b) we've nabbed the actual culprit.

~~~
rtpg
It is rhetorical, because in front a judge, you would have to have actual
evidence.

 _Of course_ the burden of proof for investigating someone's behavior is lower
than to get a conviction: if it wasn't, why would there be investigations? I
don't want to defend the FBI's idiotic handling of this (namely ignoring all
the evidence _against_ the theory), but acting like the FBI has sole
discretion to throw someone into prison with so much evidence against their
theory is very bizarre.

The only reason he might not be a free man would be that the court system can
be very slow.

~~~
jpatokal
Per the WP article on Brandon Mayfield, there was plenty of evidence, it's
just that it was 'largely "fabricated and concocted by the FBI and DOJ"'. For
example, the fingerprint was described as a "100% match", when it apparently
wasn't even close. He was also arrested as a "material witness", not a
suspect, meaning he was held incommunicado and without access to a lawyer.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandon_Mayfield)

~~~
jessaustin
The most disturbing thing for me about the wiki article is the part where an
appeals court reversed the 4th Amendment claim on the grounds that Mayfield
_didn 't have standing_. As in, a citizen who was jailed unjustly due to an
ill-considered, unconstitutional law, _doesn 't have standing to challenge
that law_. What a shithole this place has become.

~~~
rtpg
[http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-
circuit/1499231.html](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-9th-circuit/1499231.html)
Here's the ruling on that case, because at first I found it odd too (search
for "Redressability")

In order to have standing, one must prove that a favorable ruling would
provide relief. Mayfield wanted information kept by the government from house
searches to be destroyed, and the gov't argued that even if the FISA
ammendments and PATRIOT act provisions were declared unconstitutional, that
this information could still be kept.

Two arguments are pointed out:

>a Fourth Amendment violation occurs at the moment of the illegal search or
seizure, and that the subsequent use of the evidence obtained does not per se
violate the Constitution

>the Fourth Amendment does not provide a retroactive remedy for illegal
conduct

The first point is based off of this
case([http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/criminal-
procedure/crimin...](http://www.casebriefs.com/blog/law/criminal-
procedure/criminal-procedure-keyed-to-israel/arrest-search-and-
seizure/pennsylvania-bd-of-probation-and-parole-v-scott/))... it basically
says that the notion of illegal evidence only exists in a criminal court
setting. In the case mentioned (concerning parole hearings, which are
administrative hearings), this evidence can still be admitted. The argument
can then continue that the gov't can hold onto the information, they just are
not allowed to present it in court (supposedly).

I am not sure of this interpretation, but that was the argument.

~~~
jessaustin
Thanks for the explanation, but I'm sure you can understand how one might be
disappointed in caselaw that completely vitiates a basic tenet of the Bill of
Rights. I mean, if there is no remedy for a violation, why does any asshole
cop ever bother with the Miranda warning?

------
XorNot
Trying to link this to the NSA data mining is absurd. They're tangentially
related, but there is no process or regulation which is going to somehow help
you when there's an _active_ investigation and agents are digging through your
garbage and talking to past contacts.

That's the exact purview of the FBI - they weren't mining databases, all they
have to do is send a guy out to chat with some local base personnel, find out
where he used to live, look up neighbours etc. This is all active, in-person
investigative work.

~~~
amirmc
"Because the FBI agents had no concrete evidence that Mayfield was linked to
the Madrid train bombings, they decided not to apply for a criminal wiretap,
which requires probable cause to believe there is criminal activity or intent.
Rather, they applied for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)
warrant, ..." "The secret FISA court approved the request, as it almost always
does, and the FBI began its surreptitious and incredibly intrusive blanket
surveillance of Mayfield and his family."

~~~
higherpurpose
Why the hell is FBI allowed to ask for a FISA "warrant" (god, I hate their
1984 newspeak)?!

~~~
chris_wot
I didn't think it could be used for anyone but foreign citizens to the U.S.!

The FISC is pathetic.

