
DEA Orchestrates Disinformation Campaign to Conceal Surveillance Powers - greenyoda
http://popehat.com/2015/04/09/dea-orchestrates-disinformation-campaign-to-conceal-surveillance-powers
======
jstalin
One thing law students learn in law school is that by far and away the most
cases that chip away at constitutional protections are drug cases. The war on
drugs has done more to eliminate constitutional privacy protections than any
other government program. And now of course "the terrorists" seem to be the
next justification for final, complete, mass surveillance.

~~~
paulhauggis
So many people have gotten fired from their job (and had careers/jobs ruined)
over private communications that got leaked to the Internet in the last couple
of years. Nobody even mentions the fact that their privacy was violated. They
only care about the private conversation that got leaked (and of course, how
the person needs to be punished).

Anything you write on the Internet, even if it's just your personal beliefs,
will come back to haunt you in the future no matter how innocent it seems like
at the time. If it offends someone (and pretty much anything you write will
offend someone), there is a chance you could have your livelihood taken away
from you.

I'm more concerned with this than any government surveillance.

I'm fine with legalizing drugs. I'm not fine with the inability of me, as a
business owner, to be able to fire someone for coming into my place of
business under the influence. This is exactly what the CA proposed law wanted
to allow a few years back.

~~~
gress
Do you think that business owners should be allowed to fire people for coming
in to work under the influence of other prescription medications?

~~~
paulhauggis
Does it effect their job? Will it make them a danger to others while being
under the influence (a good example would be in a warehouse handling packages,
equipment, etc)? If so, yes.

The issue is that many business owners will be held liable for the actions of
a person under the influence while at work because they allowed it to happen.

There needs to be a balance between employee and employer rights or complete
tort reform to make the person under the influence completely responsible for
their actions.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
>Does it effect their job?

What happens when someone being pregnant affects their job?

~~~
semi-extrinsic
In civilized countries they are then temporarily given different assignments
which they are able to perform more satisfactorily, or they go talk to their
GP and are given part-time or full time paid sick leave.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
So then why can't the same be done for someone under the effects of a drug
prescribed by a doctor?

If you can fire someone for taking a drug to fix some ailment that they never
choose to have due to the impact on their performance, then it would make
sense that one could fire someone for choosing to become pregnant once it
impacts their performance. Both or neither.

~~~
dragonwriter
> So then why can't the same be done for someone under the effects of a drug
> prescribed by a doctor?

It is -- reasonable accommodation for temporary disability and mandatory
medical leave for medical conditions (including those resulting from the
requirements of treating some other condition) that can't be accommodated are
typical requirements in civilized countries.

~~~
Lawtonfogle
This chain was in response to the person saying they should be able to fire
someone for use of medically prescribe marijuana. I was asking for someone who
agrees with that viewpoint to denote the difference.

------
hackercurious
As Milton Friedman once said, \- “See, if you look at the drug war from a
purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the
drug cartel." \- this seems limitless in its effort and scope.

~~~
zz1
> What do I mean by that? In an ordinary free market--let's take potatoes,
> beef, anything you want--there are thousands of importers and exporters.
> Anybody can go into the business. But it's very hard for a small person to
> go into the drug importing business because our interdiction efforts
> essentially make it enormously costly. So, the only people who can survive
> in that business are these large Medellin cartel kind of people who have
> enough money so they can have fleets of airplanes, so they can have
> sophisticated methods, and so on.

In addition to which, by keeping goods out and by arresting, let's say, local
marijuana growers, the government keeps the price of these products high. What
more could a monopolist want? He's got a government who makes it very hard for
all his competitors and who keeps the price of his products high. It's
absolutely heaven.

Source, in case someone is interested in reading more:
[http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/misc/friedm1.htm](http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/misc/friedm1.htm)

~~~
benihana
>It's absolutely heaven.

I'm pretty libertarian and everything Milty says makes sense. And I get what
you're saying. But 'absolutely heaven' is a bit of a stretch, especially in
that unregulated, illegal drug game where a dispute is solved with force.

Search this page for deceased or captured to see what I mean
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexico%27s_37_most-
want...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Mexico%27s_37_most-
wanted_drug_lords)

~~~
higherpurpose
Obviously not heaven, but pretty close. The DEA helped the Sinaloa cartel own
80% of the drug market in Chicago by partnering with it to eliminate its
competitors:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the-
sin...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-government-and-the-sinaloa-
cartel-2014-1)

~~~
big_youth
This is a good article and describes how dynamic the drug war is. Currently
the Sinaloa Cartel is really struggling to keep it to together, they can't
even control their hometown of Culiacan.

------
mooredinty
Remember this Pre-Snowden disinformation?

'US DEA upset it can't break Apple's iMessage encryption'

[http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/04/us-dea-upset-it-
ca...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/04/04/us-dea-upset-it-cant-break-
apples-imessage-encryption)

I still can't believe so many people fell for that.

~~~
Karunamon
That implies some kind of evidence has come out to suggest that this article
is false. Could you point to such evidence, please?

~~~
eyeareque
They were bothered that their "stingray" like devices could not capture the
messages. But fear not, they can still get it from Prism or Xkeyscore (or
whatever they call it).

~~~
andreyf
False and false.

The article linked complaints that traditional legal interception means do not
work. Those are the ones where they nicely ask the cellular providers for the
data. It's not about "stingray like devices", it's about sending a letter and
getting the data. End-to-end encryption protects against that, be it iMessage
or BBM.

Prism collects data directly from companies that participate, and Apple has
said they do not have access to iMessages contents. There was some speculation
about courts being able to force Apple to abuse their authority as the
iMessage certificate swapper, but I've seen no evidence or convincing argument
for that to be the case.

Xkeyscore does not collect any data, but searches it.

~~~
task_queue
Apple is still subject to NSLs, and like Lavabit, can be coerced into
operating in such a way that they're able to provide message contents to
authorities while advertising that they are in fact secure.

~~~
LLWM
It's much simpler than that. Their marketing team gets their material from the
R&D team, and neither group knows about the NSLs, because why would they? Only
compliance and a few people on legal know, and everyone hates them already
anyway.

~~~
andreyf
And how would "compliance and legal" get access to something engineering
designed to be end-to-end encrypted?

~~~
task_queue
Assuming it's actually end-to-end encrypted, it is susceptible to MITM attacks
because you're trusting a centralized source with key exchange and
verification.

You cannot perform an audit on your own. You are trusting that you received
the correct keys without a way to verify identities outside of the network.

That is not secure. Please read [http://blog.quarkslab.com/imessage-
privacy.html](http://blog.quarkslab.com/imessage-privacy.html)

------
higherpurpose
> For instance, the Court helpfully ruled that law enforcement's subjective
> reasons for pulling over a car don't matter so long as they can articulate
> some objective basis for the stop, like a traffic violation — even though
> the traffic violation is only a pretext.

This has to be the Supreme Court's worst ruling in recent times since Citizens
United. The cops can stop you based on an "objective" _fake_ reason? What a
ridiculous idea. "Oh, I thought your light was broken...well nevermind that,
let's search you for drugs now!" In what world is that a "common sense"
ruling?

> The agent's declaration also disclosed that the DEA shut down the database
> in 2013 — after the Reuters story broke, in other words.

They didn't "shut it down". They only "suspended" it in September 2013...and
tried to put it back online by the end of the year. I imagine they'll keep
trying.

[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/why-we-sued-dea-
mass-s...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/04/why-we-sued-dea-mass-
surveillance-still-illegal)

~~~
rayiner
You've got it backwards. Whren means that what matters is the objective
circumstances, not what the officer is thinking. If Whren hadn't taken an
illegal turn, the officer couldn't have offered some subjective reason for
pulling him over.

~~~
maxerickson
That's an explanation of the legal theory, correct?

The other side of the issue is the practical outcome. If typical defendants
don't have the resources to examine whether the objective reasons given for
stops are legitimate, then the distinction doesn't seem very comforting.

~~~
rayiner
No, that's an explanation of the practical outcome. It's much harder to force
the typical defendant to argue about what the officer subjectively believed
than to point to the objective facts.

~~~
maxerickson
I read higherpurpose's concern as being about the use of secret surveillance
information for targeting vehicles for searches. My understanding was that
they saw that as, at least, a subversion of the way a just system ought to
work.

It looks like higherpurpose is over-reading "pretext" to be a false statement,
but I think I agree with the sentiment that I don't really want police
focusing their attention based on information that they later obscure (I would
not be surprised if there are exceptions to this that I would agree with).

So the question I was formulating was about the incentive this creates for the
officers (to pull people of interest over for whatever the hell) and the
differing ability of those people to challenge the stop. I guess on further
thought that isn't a particularly interesting question (driving is easy enough
to nitpick and find a legitimate pretext that will withstand scrutiny).

Anyway, when I said 'legal theory', I meant that you were explaining the
particulars of that decision more than you were addressing the concerns about
targeting, and when I said 'practical outcome', I was thinking about how it
would influence behavior of law enforcement more than how it would play out in
court.

------
cubano
_You expect the government to use secret surveillance and disinformation
campaigns against a wartime enemy. You probably don 't expect the government
to use secret surveillance and disinformation campaigns in court against its
own citizens._

Why wouldn't you expect that?

Just a cursory reading of the history of civilization shows that, along with
warfare, those in power lying to and spying on others has always occurred.

Please don't get me wrong, I am not agreeing with it, but at some point I
think people need to just wake up and realize this is what they do.

I really do not understand why people continue to act shocked or surprised
about this.

~~~
talmand
I would think the same history shows that people continue to be surprised as
such revelations. No matter how many times it has happened before. Throughout
history human beings have had a serious problem based on the sad idea that "it
won't happen to me".

~~~
maxerickson
That's not entirely fair to modern forms of government, which to a large
extent anticipate the problems. The Bill of Rights is a list of things that
government power should not be used for.

(Yes, I realize that it is easy to come up with abuses of the Bill of Rights,
my point is that the Bill of Rights was not written based on the sad idea that
you mention there, it was written for pretty much exactly the opposite reason)

~~~
talmand
It is entirely fair; it's fair to point out that without constant vigilance
every form of government can slide into oppression of its people.

Yes, the Bill of Rights was written to counter the abuses of the government it
sought to replace. But over time these things tend to slip into oppression. It
has nothing to do with those that attempt to make change, it's those that
follow and squander the changes provided to them. Governments change, laws
change.

------
praptak
In some countries it is illegal to provide false information to the court,
especially so if you're a government agent. How is this "parallel but fake"
evidence even legal?

~~~
unabridged
I don't think they are providing fake evidence as much as just not disclosing
everything. "The DEA told me to watch for his car and pull him over for a
traffic violation. I noticed the suspect change lanes without signal and I
pulled him over." They just leave out the first sentence.

The problem is when they don't disclose properly the worst case scenario (for
the government) is just a mistrial or acquittal. In cases where the defense
suspects parallel construction, they need to put the officers on the stand and
ask them straight out "did you receive any information from a federal
government agency about the defendant?". Make them either give it up or
perjure themselves.

~~~
gknoy
... and even then, you're betting that they will choose not to perjure
themself if they had received such information. How is one to prove that they
received it?

~~~
unabridged
The Feds keep records of everything, who knows what might be leaked or be
FOIAed or released in some other trial.

It can't hurt to ask, if it convinces one cop not to lie its worth it.

------
barrkel
If I'm not mistaken, this is just talking about parallel construction, right?

~~~
fweespeech
Yes. That and the fact they are using their international surveillance data to
prosecute domestically...

------
stretchwithme
Wouldn't you be shocked if they hadn't?

~~~
tobltobs
You would be shocked if the law enforcement would operate within the limits of
the law?

~~~
a3n
Yes, after what we've seen in the last few years, I would be shocked if these
kinds of things were not SOP, encouraged and rewarded.

Sure, there are many opportunities for law enforcement to act ethically. Yup,
I really was speeding, and I deserved that ticket. Those sorts of acts are
probably the norm. But that doesn't mean that law enforcement is therefore
ethical. The stain of one lie doesn't wash out.

Lying to courts, suppressing stingrays, not spying "whittingly." As the post
says, lying has been normalized.

~~~
talmand
Years? More like centuries. History is rife with examples of abuse from people
with power over those that have no power. It's something that has been fought,
defended, tolerated, or the cause of revolutions since forever.

This is just a new face to an old problem that has been a constant struggle
for the human race.

~~~
a3n
Absolutely.

Digital surveillance is a two-edged sword. As the abuse moves more toward
digital, it becomes more possible for weak individual citizen-victimss to turn
the spotlight/sword around.

The government trump is they have guns and jails, and they police themselves.

------
oafitupa
Check out this obvious DEA astroturfer:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/30ydu0/cbs_federal...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/30ydu0/cbs_federal_agents_accused_of_stealing_from/cpwy282)

~~~
tveita
Besides being unrelated to the Popehat article, I don't see anything wrong in
that post. What makes it an obvious DEA astroturfer?

~~~
LLWM
Because the DEA is so _obviously_ wrong that anyone who takes their side
_must_ be an astroturfer. How could a real person agree with them? I mean,
other than the real people who work at the DEA. Or work with them. And the
policymakers they are following the orders of. And the people who voted for
those policymakers.

