
Justice officials fear nation's biggest wiretap operation may not be legal - escapologybb
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/11/11/dea-wiretap-operation-riverside-california/75484076/
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jimrandomh
This example from the article seems illustrative:

> That should have been enough to build a significant federal case with a long
> mandatory prison sentence, but that was not what happened. Court records
> show the Justice Department prosecuted the $76,869.94 in a civil asset
> seizure case. But it did not prosecute Salazar. Instead, Salazar was booked
> into jail and released the same day; his lawyer, John Passanante, said he
> has not been charged as a result of the search. Neither the DEA nor
> prosecutors would explain why.

There are legal restrictions on when law enforcement officers are allowed to
use wiretaps and other searches. Rather than enforce these limits directly,
the US court system adopted the position that limits on searches would be
enforced only by excluding evidence that resulted from illegal searches - but
that those who conducted the illegal search could not, themselves, be punished
for it. Then later, as the jury trial system and other procedural safeguards
broke down, this stopped mattering, since there aren't very many trials to
exclude evidence from anyways. In this case, the Justice Department got what
it wanted: about $77k in cash. If he had been poor and not had a proper
lawyer, he would've also spent significant time in prison.

~~~
ende
This is why we need a police force to police the police. If you work in law
enforcement and break the rules, you get held personally accountable.

~~~
akshatpradhan
+1 for Body cams?

~~~
ende
Yeah, but with publicly accessible feeds. Law enforcement needs a court order
to classify data from the public, not the other way around. Also, a
"malfunctioning" body-camera disqualifies an officer from duty, etc.

I imagine though it's probably far more important to have unhindered citizen
surveilance of law enforcement, along with a court marshall style grand jury.

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masterleep
Everybody knows it's not legal. The question is what is anyone going to do
about it? Answer: nothing.

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lpolovets
Justice officials fear nation's biggest wiretap operation may not be legal.

Everyone else fears laws will be changed to make nation's biggest wiretap
operation perfectly legal.

------
revelation
44000 people in a year, with 2000 working hours per year, comes out to not
even three minutes per person.

Surely there is some kind of oversight in place?

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nickff
What would you expect the overseers to do, and why? It seems that the real
question comes down to:

 _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ \- Who watches the watchers?

The court is supposed to oversee these searches, and the people are supposed
to oversee the courts. It seems that this system is not working very well, as
might have been anticipated, because the founding fathers never expected
government officials to fight so hard to abridge the rights of the citizenry,
nor did they expect that the courts or citizens would go along so willingly.
The people simply do not care about abstract rights.

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_cudgel
What do they fear? A public relations nightmare? Because they sure as hell
aren't going to go to jail for any of this. Neither the Justice Dept.
officials, nor the Judge authorizing this, nor the police carrying it out will
have to deal with any negative consequences as a result. The USA is a nearly-
complete police state, after all.

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55555
Most employees aim to minimize their workload. Are these rogue crimefighters
truly motivated only by making a negligible difference in the amount of drugs
on our streets in the short-term? I think the more likely scenario is that
they are reselling some of the seized drugs and pocketing the profits.

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will_pseudonym
Jimmy McNulty is at it again!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McNulty](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_McNulty)

