
DEA authorized to conduct surveillance on protestors - codezero
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jasonleopold/george-floyd-police-brutality-protests-government
======
arkadiyt
Via Kim Zetter:

> If you're wondering why DEA and US Marshal's Service have been given
> authority to conduct covert surveillance of protestors, it's likely because
> they have planes outfitted with Dirtboxes - powerful stingray devices that
> collect data on phones from the air

[https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1267969704259280896](https://twitter.com/KimZetter/status/1267969704259280896)

~~~
kevinmchugh
This may explain why the DEA, but not why _protestors_ , as opposed to looters

~~~
mkgolden
Maybe it is because protesters are more of a threat to those in power than
looters

~~~
jessaustin
Of course, most of the looters are undercover cops anyway.

~~~
croissants
Most? I've seen hundreds of people looting in my neighborhood. Most of them
aren't even _adults_ , let alone cops.

------
billme
>> “In August 2013, a report by Reuters revealed that the Special Operations
Division (SOD) of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration advises DEA agents
to practice parallel construction when creating criminal cases against
Americans that are based on NSA warrantless surveillance.”

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction#By_the_U...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction#By_the_United_States_Drug_Enforcement_Administration)

~~~
koheripbal
How is this relevant to this article?

Parallel construction can occur from any justice department org.

~~~
testbot123
Because the DEA has a special unit for it:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-
dir...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-directs-
agents-to-cover-up-program-used-to-investigate-americans-
idUSBRE97409R20130805)

------
seesawtron
There was a post on Reddit where a guy found dozens of cameras hidden on poles
that he could access with their IP addresses in browser and even control
directly and get live feed into people's homes. Some of those said "Property
of DEA". Eventually hundreds of people started accessing with the ip addresses
that were listed by the OP and the feed was cut off.

[0]
[https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gin79z/...](https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy_commons/comments/gin79z/i_made_an_alt_because_this_is_sketchy_so_i_can/)

~~~
01100011
We knew years ago that the DEA has cameras all over the place. They do things
like hide them in traffic control devices and read license plates with them.
They analyze the traffic to look for drug mules and pass off tips to local
police so they can execute parallel construction and hide the real source of
the evidence. We all talked about it and, like most big brother shit, no one
cared and we all moved on. Glad the kids are rediscovering it.

[https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-
surveillan...](https://qz.com/1458475/the-dea-and-ice-are-hiding-surveillance-
cameras-in-streetlights/)

[https://reason.com/2012/07/11/dea-quietly-builds-its-
network...](https://reason.com/2012/07/11/dea-quietly-builds-its-network-of-
licens/)

------
themodelplumber
I wish we had more opportunities to learn about and highlight the kind of tech
that could change or strongly affect this sort of narrative.

Tech isn't always the answer, but here we are on HN reading about a
frustrating issue, a bunch of spinning wheels in a sense, and we're good at
tech as a group.

I don't even know what it would look like, but currently the typical HN
community response to this stuff is hyper-perceptive. From "here we go" to
"here's what the article says". This alone is far too limited (we're not just
here with our popcorn; we want to _do_) and it creates a pattern that can
eventually shut out such news because no traction can be gained--what's the
point.

IMO we can build communications environments and frameworks that empower
ourselves and others to take creative action, even of the sociopolitical type.
And if we can't build 'em, we can share and promote the news.

(Some of you are already doing this--thank you, please keep sharing your work)

~~~
Thorentis
What exactly do you want to empower people to do? Loot Louis Vuitton and
Walmart in the name of stopping police brutality? This violence isn't good for
anybody and needs to stop.

~~~
monadic2
Well, to be able to spot propaganda like the variety you’re spouting right now
would be a decent start.

I’m not even sure where to begin worrying about the assets of WALMART AND
LOUIS VITTON of all stores over the needs and apparent rage of the local
community.

~~~
barnesto
Because it's just property, right? No downstream effects on society at all,
right?

I'm sure you were out their leading the charge when Justine Damond was shot in
the stomach by a cop in Minneapolis, right?

This isn't about race and probably never was. Tragic as it is, looting and
riots are going to solve anything. Seriously, if you think that's helpful,
then you are the problem. What's happening now is akin to a toddler throwing a
tantrum. This behavior won't change anything. It's all virtue signalling until
dark when it turns in to chaos.

So how about spouting of some things that will actually make a difference,
instead of following the crowd blindly in to the Apple store as you yell,
"hands up. don't shoot."

~~~
wetmore
You know people can complain about the way they are treated without needing to
come up with a solution, right? Your comment is akin to defending a bully
whise response to their victim's pleas to stop bullying them is "make me".
Besides, there are a variety of actions and reforms the protesters call for,
and just because they may differ, or arent being actively chanted in the
streets, doesn't mean they aren't being made. At the very least, I'm sure
everyone protesting would agree that they want to see real consequences for
uncalled-for police violence going forward, instead of the current system
which has failed in this regard. You may disagree with that solution but to
argue it isn't being proposed at all is just wrong. If you haven't seen the
proposals people are making, you aren't paying attention.

------
sdhrnrhbrt
This situation reminds me the beginning of the pandemic: everybody thought
it's just a couple cases here and there and would resolve by itself quickly.
This won't resolve quickly, partially because the current sketchy
administration really needs this kind of protest to justify using more force
and implementing the global survelliance - something they've been wanting for
long time.

~~~
Trasmatta
I'm also having a similar emotional response that I did in mid March. Fear,
anxiety, anger, sleepless nights, and distorted time perception.

~~~
mjayhn
I'm livid with companies that aren't talking about this with their employees
and giving them space and flexibility on deadlines, meetings, telling them to
not worry about taking vacation if they need to, etc.

I've talked to so many friends that are stressed out and barely able to work
or function right now and they have massive anxiety and stress from world
events that are only being compounded by managers and C's not leading by
example and telling them to take time for themselves and stopping the
unnecessary meetings or TELLING them that they understand their productivity
might be gone.

And these are fairly privileged people with the ability to work from home and
a stable income.

My wife is a black engineer and she's hanging on the last 2 days still taking
client meetings and putting on her "work is still important" face but she's
miserable before and after dealing with them. She's also, like a lot of us who
haven't been hearing direct empathy from leadership, afraid to take
PTO/Vacation right now BECAUSE of the economy and fear of losing her job.

On the flip side I have seen a lot of companies that are giving people Fridays
off, 3-4 day weekends to decompress, etc.

I think after this I'll be moving to only working for companies that I find to
be very active in social movements.

~~~
0xffff2
I'm really shocked that this is the case. I work for a big evil company (not
entirely by choice, my former company was acquired). I really didn't have
anything nice to say about them before the pandemic, but so far through the
last couple of months they've been doing everything you're talking about. If
my company, with their incredibly damning Wikipedia article can do it, I'm at
a loss to why anyone else can't.

~~~
mjayhn
I've mostly worked for old-timey telco companies not from CA/WA and they're
pretty behind the times on empathetic leadership in my experience. I didn't
really start even experiencing what I consider empathetic leadership until I
started working for CA/WA companies over the last 5 years.

Any remotely awkward event that popped up you likely had a boss who just
didn't say a peep about anything because they didn't want to rock the boat.

Thankfully I'm seeing a lot more reports of the opposite this week but there's
still a lot of those companies out there.

------
ineedasername
At the same time that this administration decries the overreach by other
government law enforcement bodies such as the FBI.

~~~
abootstrapper
That’s because the FBI was investigating them and their buddies. For Trump
it’s not about principles, it’s about power and what they can get away with.

------
Ididntdothis
I am starting to wonder if this is what it means to run "government like a
business". Corporations are basically authoritarian dictatorships that don't
tolerate dissent or only within a narrow range and it seems that government is
run the same way.

------
readhn
Surveillance of protesters:

Student leaders were put under close surveillance by the authorities, traffic
cameras were used to perform surveillance on the square and the restaurants in
the nearby area and where students gathered were wiretapped.[108] This
surveillance led to the identification, capture and punishment of participants
of the protest.[109] After the massacre, the government did thorough
interrogations at work units, institutions and schools to identify who had
been at the protest.[110]

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Tiananmen_Square_protests#Surveillance_of_protesters)

~~~
tempodox
Clearly Trump and his accomplices are huge fans and admirers of Chinese
methods. And they've only just started.

------
dnsprovider
Palantir has contracts with these agencies. So you've got Facebook board
members, and probably Mark Zuckerberg, profiting from this chaos.

Are you guys figuring out the game yet?

~~~
bigyikes
Curious: what is Zuck’s relation to Palantir?

~~~
SauciestGNU
Peter Thiel serving on the board of both Facebook and palantir.

------
mnm1
Good to see that any pretense that the drug war was not just another way to
enslave minorities and other undesirables is gone with the current government.
Now they're bringing in the veteran warriors who have deep experience
suppressing the aforementioned. A more hostile and unnecessary police force
than the DEA doesn't exist.

------
hirundo
"The DEA is limited by statute to enforcing drug related federal crimes."

Barely an inconvenience.

~~~
monadic2
They just need to sprinkle a little crack before making the arrest.

~~~
oldsklgdfth
I'm waiting for when "sprinkle a little covid on dead people" becomes a thing.

------
anm89
I think this has more profound history and consequences than people realize.

The DEA for a long time has been slowly transforming into this catch all
military/police/spy/logistics/legal/intelligence/technical agency. It picks up
little bits of responsibility and capability here and there that enable it to
do some function in a drug case. But because the funding of drug law
enforcement is so crucial for so many government functions in direct and
indirect ways, and because individuals in a position often benefit from an
increase in scope the pressure is always towards scope creep, to saying yes
when permission for more power is asked.

So the DEA has organically expanded and expanded and expanded and the more
this is accepted the easier it is for it to creep further and further until it
starts to resemble something totally different than how it would have
originally been envisioned.

On the other side of this you get someone like Trump, who is looking for tools
he can use that have limited restrictions on their powers and a wide scope of
arenas in which they can be deployed, and the DEA is an obvious choice.

An you end up with a very dangerous combo of a person who is looking for as
much power as he can grab onto and this entity which is incredibly efficient
and capturing scope and power within our current system and therefore
extremely ripe for abuse.

This is a great argument for strictly defining the scope of these alphabet
soup agencies upfront and making the process to change those scopes very
restrictive. Unfortunately we've chosen the exact opposite path.

~~~
adamsea
As the people say, "Fuck 12".

~~~
anm89
As much as I support not supporting the police, I feel like there are better
ways to further that cause than shouting cryptic slogans.

------
xamuel
Nothing better captures systemic, institutional, hidden racism than the war on
drugs. Why oh why can't we end that already!

~~~
tempodox
I don't find that systemic, institutional racism very much hidden.

------
jimbob45
Before it gets asked...

>The DEA is limited by statute to enforcing drug related federal crimes. But
on Sunday, Timothy Shea, a former US Attorney and close confidant of Barr who
was named acting administrator of the DEA last month, received approval from
Associate Deputy Attorney General G. Bradley Weinsheimer to go beyond the
agency’s mandate “to perform other law enforcement duties” that Barr may “deem
appropriate.”

~~~
pfundstein
How can we repair a system that's been systematically corrupted over several
years? As a systems engineer my instinct is to rebuild the system from the
ground up. If only politics was that simple.

~~~
munificent
The way we fix legacy software systems: By carefully refactoring it one step
at a time and testing and monitoring to make sure our refactoring doesn't
break stuff that's working correctly.

The big rewrite is always appealing but almost always doomed to failure. There
is 200+ years of painfully learned lessons in the US legal code. If we throw
it all out and start over, we'll have to re-learn all of those lessons one
tragedy at a time.

~~~
Cerium
How far can we push this software analogy...

The government is a PAAS business. They have various customers, both direct
B2C, like you and me, and B2B relationships with other companies that run
business on their platform. Either way the customers pay quarterly or yearly
for the services through a system called taxes.

Political activists and are a type of white /gray hat hacker who seeks to
demonstrate exploitable flaws in the platform and may benefit through bug
bounties from backers or through getting advantageous features implemented.
Lobbyists are a kind of social engineer that also wishes to influence feature
decisions.

Legislators are a type of software developer. Their job is complicated by the
lack of adequate test and simulation environments, and the presence of
competing interests who frequently oppose the suggested features or
implementation decisions but whose approval is often needed for the PR to
garnish approval.

~~~
gumby
> How far can we push this software analogy...

People used to talk about the "Microsoft tax"... well this system already has
Federal, State, and local taxes...

------
eli
Is there an easy way to detect fake cell towers? A rooted android maybe?
Wouldn’t be surprised if they’re using Stingrays and it would be fun to catch
one in the wild.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
There's already apps for it. You need root if you want to actually be able to
avoid the suspicious towers.

~~~
r00fus
Most previous versions of iOS are rootable - easy on an older phone that can't
be updated.

------
ryandrake
Hmm... If they want to stop rioting and looting, why are they going after
"protestors" rather than the rioters and looters? Someone's torching a mall?
No police in sight. People are walking and chanting in the street? That calls
for a crowd of 1000 police fully decked out in military gear and tear gas,
itching to crush heads.

~~~
tehwebguy
They don't care about rioting or looting. Watch how the police have been
arranged, in Los Angeles at least. They are there to make the protest seem
dangerous, while intentionally allowing looting to go on 2 streets over.

The idea is to allow scary looking but ultimately meaningless damage to occur
while blaming it on protestors.

~~~
pasquinelli
The respond to peaceful protests with violence, which causes rioting, which
leads to more power and money for police.

------
sgnelson
Barr is one of the most dangerous AG's this country has ever had. He believes
in extreme executive power. That "secularism" is evil and the downfall of this
country. Worst of all imo, is that he believes that the law enforcement of the
federal government is there solely to serve the president. Somehow he still
calls himself a conservative.

~~~
threatofrain
Secularism (the sharing of religious space in a pluralistic society) is not a
particularly unifying perspective among American Christians so it's not very
surprising. For American Christians, secularism is a fancy word for "forfeit
the power in your hands."

------
Krasnol
It's interesting how the USA is becoming again a Brzezinski Experiment State.

This time it's all the new fancy tech combined with the military on home soil
and a mad head of state.

Did anyone spot those fancy microwave crowd control stuff yet?

~~~
crocodiletears
Can you expand upon that? I'm unfamiliar with the context behind 'Brzezinski
Experiment State'.

~~~
Krasnol
It was a common phrase of Brzezinski during the Cold War era to describe the
Soviet Union (or East Block countries) as "Communist Experiments" (vs. USA as
the Proto-Capitalist Experiment country). I'm not sure if he'd did that in the
english version of his books though.

One of his German ones is called: "Das gescheiterte Experiment: Der Untergang
des kommunistischen Systems" (The failed experiment: the fall of the communist
system".

~~~
crocodiletears
Ah, thanks!

------
sdhrnrhbrt
I'm not sure what the US administration is doing, but I won't be surprised if
they are going to manage this as good as the virus pandemic, i.e. that they
are completely oblivious to what's happening and what to do with it.

Since it's not in my interests to find one day an angry mob at my house, I'm
tempted to give some advice regarding the "crowd management". The nation is
like a bowl with liquid: the bowl is the borders that contain it and emotions
is the force that drives the liquid particles. The exact equation describing
this liquid doesn't matter much. What matters is that just like any liquid
like substances contained in something, it has resonance modes and resonance
frequencies. If there is an external periodic driving force (emotions in our
case), the frequency of the force is going to find one of the resonance modes
and once the mode is found, the amplitude grows exponentially. Time to find
this mode depends on the strength (amplitude) of the driving force. The way to
prevent or even stop the resonance is to keep changing the driving frequency:
then the liquid forms steady patterns.

~~~
adamsea
Or we could just hold police officers accountable when they break the law.

~~~
colejohnson66
Or we could do both?

------
monadic2
Parallel construction in effect!

If you’re going to a protest, for the love of god bring a prepaid phone.

------
readhn
In Soviet union it was KGB and their black Volga's coming in the early morning
hours to pick up the "inconvenient" ones. Early morning hours were picked
because there were not many witnesses around. How far away from KGB are any of
these 3 letter angencies? DEA, FBI, CIA, NSA...?

------
082349872349872
my cynical take: DEA has been authorized because DOD will not.

B-34 et infra, p.B-6 FM 3-19.15
[https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-19-15.pdf](https://fas.org/irp/doddir/army/fm3-19-15.pdf)
(esp B-54)

I have no idea what the most recent incarnation of GARDEN PLOT may be, the
above is what I found in a quick search. But I'd hope that at this point the
DOD is more likely to side with the population than other agencies, and work-
to-rule if need be.

Anyone know of an online copy of DA Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2?

------
trfhuhg
Many comments here assuming that we can get out of this hole we've fallen into
by changing laws or replacing the administration.

Perhaps things are falling apart because of the massive influx of
underdeveloped evil egos: they've got a supermajority mostly everywhere and
can ignore the few good people. This is what some Hindi manuscripts mean by
kali-uga - the dark age.

With this skeptical view in mind, there isn't much we can do to reverse the
flow. It's a flood and we can do our part to minimize the damage, but
ultimately we have to wait when the weather changes.

~~~
pasquinelli
There aren't that many people with power. We can only assume these
underdeveloped evil egos have a supermajority within a group of a few
thousand. Numerically, that's not an unmanagable problem, supposing it's the
case.

~~~
trfhuhg
It's apparently enough to have just a few people with visible power. I'm just
saying, the reason we see so much snow everywhere is because it's the winter
of the human civilization. And no, the winter won't end because some good
minded folks issued a decree that from now on its summer.

------
vsareto
It says for fourteen days. Can you open an very wide investigation and keep it
ongoing for longer than that?

~~~
chiefalchemist
You can collect a lot of data that will have value long after the window is
closed.

------
adamsea
So with the DEA spying on Twitter what messaging apps are truly secure these
days for the organizers of the peaceful protests to use?

------
r00fus
This is the thin edge to a national police action. Crazy how little oversight
there is over the executive branch (and this administration in particular).

~~~
paxys
The entire "checks and balances" system breaks down when a handful of
Republicans in the Senate are complicit in everything that is going on.

~~~
munificent
_> when a handful of Republicans in the Senate_

This is one of the really brilliant things the GOP has done. They've led us
all to believe that it's just McConnell and a couple of other shitbags but
that the rest of the Republicans are mostly OK.

That's a deliberate smokescreen. Notice that the "handful of Republicans"
always happen to be in red strongholds? McConnell volunteers to be the public
face of the GOP's bad policies because they know his seat is secure.
Meanwhile, all the other GOP Congresspeople who support those same awful
policies but might risk losing an election can stay out of the news and
pretend it's not their doing.

McConnell was voted into his seat by a _majority_ of the GOP Senators. They
all know what they're doing.

~~~
kyleblarson
Gosh if only the cities that are burning to the ground right now had dem
senators, dem congresspeople, dem governors, dem mayor, dem city councils we
could solve this thing. Alas!

~~~
ceejayoz
This (inadvertently) highlights a major part of the issue right now. Cops are
largely invulnerable to civilian oversight. Democratic elected officials won’t
save you from the NYPD - they can’t really be fired, the police union doxxes
the mayor’s daughter, they instigate police riots, and they do work stoppages
when criticized.

An example from Minneapolis, from a City Council member:

[https://twitter.com/MplsWard3/status/1267891878801915904](https://twitter.com/MplsWard3/status/1267891878801915904)

> Politicians who cross the MPD find slowdowns in their wards. After the first
> time I cut money from the proposed police budget, I had an uptick in calls
> taking forever to get a response, and MPD officers telling business owners
> to call their councilman about why it took so long.

~~~
beerandt
This is a result of public unions. Which party caused those to be so strong?

~~~
ceejayoz
Police unions are fairly unique, and heavily supported by the Republican party
in recent political history.

[https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-and-police-unions-a-
lo...](https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-gop-and-police-unions-a-love-story)

> When Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker cracked down on collective bargaining
> rights of public-sector unions, he exempted cops and fire fighters. He
> feared the police might go on strike and join the protestors. Videos of that
> pairing could have doomed Walker’s entire effort. “It’s a decision by
> politicians not to bite off more than they can chew,” explains James Sherk,
> a labor policy expert with the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Their impunity to civilian oversight should be concerning to both parties.
You're not hearing much concern from the Republicans on this right now.

------
naveen99
I doubt they really care to stop or punish retail looting. Probably just
testing / practicing their ability to detect more serious terrorism. I hope...

~~~
ashtonkem
I admire your optimism. I don’t think you’re right, but I admire it.

~~~
naveen99
Imagine a virtual protest over zoom where people loot copyrighted media by
sharing it with fellow protesters... kind of like a civil disobedience Napster
/ scihub thing. Bill Gates, and the RIAA and MPAA and the publishers would
historically be horrified, but given the transient, justifiable protest, their
political message would be accepting. the DEA and NSA would want in again, not
because they care to stop retail piracy (free advertising), but corporate
espionage and tax evasion by people who have a lot of money.

