EFF: "Parallel construction" is really intelligence laundering
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I know many will overreact and bring out extreme examples of murder or serious violent crimes. Yet that is not what those who are utilizing these tools are going after and prosecuting. They are generally minor or petty crimes, at least that I have read about so far. It seems like an overzealous us of a tool for perfunctory government twerps to feel empowered and make a case for their continued existence...not at all beneficial in the short or long term
I hope that's not true, because if it is, our society is doomed.
The continued development of smaller and cheaper sensors means that our "choice" is between a world in which no one has privacy, or in which only special entities of some sort do. The attempt to protect privacy is one with the attempt to stop information sharing of all other kinds -- possible for specific instances, but not for the general case.
>> I hope that's not true, because if it is, our society is doomed.
I don't think he means what you think he means. I think he means "forgive" the transgressions of people, because who should be punished for the phases we go through in high school or college trying to figure out who we are? I would wager that most people went through at least one period that they are now embarrassed about. Probably the most common would be people who drank to much and acted out but have since figured out that drinking for them is not a good idea and so don't do it.
As parent notes "forget" isn't going to happen. That is a relic of the past. So we need to "forgive" (or even tolerate, or accept, some things that maybe aren't so bad after all.)
Solve all of those problems, and maybe the fact that everything is not so private anymore wouldn't be such a big problem. But that's going to take many decades to fix, and until then I'd rather try to stop the mass spying, by repealing the laws allowing it and cutting their funding.
No, no matter how widespread access to surveillance information becomes, the powerful will still be able to keep privacy for themselves. Don't want to be tracked while you go shopping? Hire someone to do it for you and let all of their actions get fed into Big Data.
Take for example David Petraeus. His career may have been only collateral damage of an investigation that took advantage of records of drafts and IP addresses used to log into gmail. He may have felt sincerely honor bound to resign, and his career may resurrect itself, especially if his party is about to nominate some of its most crazy for the presidential election. However, it is at least possible to imagine that people who were happy to see him lose influence wouldn't have been eager to stick out their own necks to sweep everything under the rug.
I think there are at least a couple broad categories of people who have different relationships with power and surveillance. You can be wealthy, enjoying your wealth and no threat to anyone else with influence, or you may be someone who has the resources to effect the change you think the world needs.
Once upon a time monarchs put aside their differences in attempts to hunt down regicides, but on other days they occupied themselves with trying to conquer each others' realms.
you're == you are
upvoted:)
edit: spelling
Actually that would constitute a Brady violation[1]:
> The prosecutor must disclose exculpatory evidence known only to the police. That is, the prosecutor has a duty to reach out to the police and establish regular procedures by which the police must inform him of anything that tends to prove the innocence of the defendant.
Now, it's at the discretion of the prosecutor, but if you had evidence that evidence was withheld then can exercise some recourse against the prosecutor. Often-times it results in a re-trial rather than a cash settlement or the case being dismissed.
What's perhaps scarier is that the prosecutor wouldn't even know when / if possible exculpatory evidence exist or whether their evidence is fruit of the poisonous tree (fancy way of saying legitimate evidence that is found as a result of illegal search & seizure). I spoke with 3 buddies yesterday that are prosecutors and they told me they hated this concept of "parallel construction," they felt like it took prosecutorial discretion out of their hands and made their job—to uphold our laws—more difficult.
Now, there are bad prosecutors out there. People motivated by politics and self interest, but they are the few. The folks that just want convictions and to better their stats. Those folks will likely never care where they get the ammunition to "put away the bad guys."
If NSA total surveillance is used in this manner - imagine the possibilities. You take a large sum of cash out of your bank account - or mention to a friend you're going to do a large purchase this weekend. The surveillance dragnet alerts the local authorities, they stop you for traffic violations, take the cash and the car and any valuable property that is on you and now you face the prospect of very costly and unsure legal battle to get it back - since forfeiture cases have no presumption of innocence and no requirement of criminal conviction, and to invoke terror clauses you only need terror-related investigation going on - and as NSA has recently explained us, literally everything is relevant for terror investigations and thus can be considered "related".
If you think I'm exaggerating, read this: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_... This is already happening, albeit small scale. Anti-terror information centers are already being used for it. But total surveillance makes this kind of abuse much easier to perpetrate on a scale.
As for those being "the few" - if they are so small group, why the "good guys" don't stop them? It looks like many of those maybe wouldn't do it themselves, but they have very little against it being done right next to them and against benefitting from it.
I think trolling is going to become an important part of our ecosystem before long, especially when it comes to fuzzing data miners and frustrating their data collection activities. Enough trolling and the system will be too expensive to follow up on.
There's probably more than a few. Consider the large number of cases that have been overturned in Illinois and Texas over that last decade or so. Many of these folks were railroaded and only saved by volunteers and brave attorneys.
And for all the damage these "common" criminals did, consider that much of the recent massive economic fraud done and damage caused by well connected "businessmen" and "bankers" will not go punished due to lack of enforcement and statue of limitations.
TANJ!
Look at anyone like a cop, nurse, teacher, CPS worker, etc that works in a highly dysfunctional community, you'll find that some folks get really jaded and start to see things that don't really exist. The things that these people see are horrible and some folks can't cut it. It's hard to unsee the 30-40 active child abuse cases that a Chicago CPS worker deals with every week, and the support structures in the organizations are often nonexistent, which allows bad behavior to take place.
They stop thinking of the people in the community as people and see them as perps. Potentially exonerating evidence is perceived as a speed-bump or excuse.
Indeed but even more, even a "bad prosecutor" wants discretion. When a prosecutors become the mere cog in a concocted theater, they are just window dressing and the "parallel constructors" hold all the strings.
I suppose we can take some comfort that even not-perfect people can want democracy because they don't want one person who isn't them holding the strings.
Your meaning was clear, just saw that you'd done it a couple of times. :)
Otherwise, prosecutors would just avoid knowing.
Or the same government that thinks that if it torture peoples and holds them indefinitely without charges in another country, then it's okay, because it didn't happen in their country?
You think that government cares to divulge secret info that would make someone innocent in a trial?
Actually, the policy of holding them indefinitely after having been tortured is based on the assumption that they will be extremists after having been tortured.
Yes it is as insane as it sounds: the military is torturing them, and then holding them in custody because they were tortured.
If you're innocent, you're innocent, no matter what the cops and courts say.
I think the verb you are looking for is "acquit". Or the slightly longer but more general "prove your innocence".
We can't forget that the NSA is one of many[1] intelligence agencies in the USG, so this parallel construction phenomenon isn't directly attributed to the NSA's spying efforts being focused domestically.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/US_intelligence_community#Membe...
But then you're allowing evidence collection by any means.
I'll just break into your house and rifle through your documents and possessions until I find evidence you have committed a crime. Better yet, I'll kidnap and torture you until you confess to something. Once I have that (illegal) confession, I'll start my "parallel construction" until I find another way to prove you guilty of whatever it was you confessed to.
See any problem with that?
Exactly. The purpose of the rule excluding improperly obtained evidence is to penalize the government for obtaining it improperly. It's a mechanism designed to ensure compliance: Take away the ability of law enforcement to benefit by breaking the rules and you get less rule breaking.
What this is is an end run around all that. The government benefits from violating the constitution by learning which rocks to turn over to make their case and the courts can't punish them for that by taking away the fruits of the illegal search because the government doesn't tell them about it in the first place.
A forensic analyst doesn't get started until it looks like a crime's been committed.
The sad part is that people continue to fall for it.
to be confronted with the witnesses against him; Witnesses in this passage supposedly applies to evidence, not just people witnesses. Therefore it should violate that part.
Witnesses are the people that are the source of evidence. Testimony is one form of evidence, but physical evidence still comes from people.
parallel construction as concept probably there could be some debate over
the specific implementation where neither defense, prosecution or judge is made aware of the actual facts of the case and the enforcement officials actually lie in sworn testimony? not sure why this would even have to go to the supreme court its plain simple and unambiguous perjury.
then how does this differ from the government just using whatever means it wants to collect whatever evidence it wants and pretending that it didnt?
that said analyst came by as result of committing a crime (deliberately violating 4th of citizens without probable cause)
1) Government Employee A uses wire taps, NSA, any evidence finding method at all including inadmissable evidence, illegally aquired evidence, or classified means to collect data
2) Government Employee A anonymously calls Government Employee B and gives them specific actionable tip that Government Employee B is aware is already vetted by a Government Employee and hence is highly reliable
3) Government Employee B uses specific tip to gather further evidence, then using all available evidence sources constructs an alternative 'plausible' but false way that the evidence trail was generated, and presents this to the jury as truth... the prosecutor and judge may or may not be made aware of the true investigation/evidence trail
4) Government officially endorses this method as standard policy
Of course, what's appropriate in some situations is hugely inappropriate in others.
If there isn't a political solution, it falls on the technical community to design encryption and privacy into their products that "just works". Here, ideally, the default state of Internet servers and clients would be to encrypt traffic so that they can be used through a service like TOR without worrying about an exit node snarfing usernames and passwords. Then look at integrating TOR functionality into these servers and clients as transparently as possible such that they will relay internal traffic by default and prefer hidden service connections to servers that are both public and private to reduce the need for exit nodes.
At the end of the day strong encryption can simply be made illegal, so it's more important to try to get society back to a "mind your own business" outlook. That can start with a concerted effort to talk about it among family and friends, especially at the moment when it's not a partisan issue.
1. Write to your congressman. Tell them that this is unacceptable.
2. Vote third party. Put the hurt on the major parties and force them to move, and if they do not move, remove them and put new parties in their place.
3. Educate people. This is no longer just a crazy conspiracy theory or a bunch of paranoid fears. You have cops, prosecutors, etc. admitting that this is common practice.
Also, take a moment to reflect on just how many other things had to happen for us to get into this situation. We are here because something as mundane as a traffic stop can and often does lead to a felony arrest. The intelligence gathering would accomplish nothing if it were not for the massive number of laws, the massive number of victimless crimes, and the vast power we have given to the police. The next time you hear a politician talking about the need to get tough on crime, the need to give the police more power to arrest people, the need for more laws, look back on this and ask yourself if you really want a strict law-and-order society.
Be sure to tell others about it too. We need more than an irrelevant minority to understand just how dangerous things are getting.