DEA Orchestrates Disinformation Campaign to Conceal Surveillance Powers | Hacker News Reader

DEA Orchestrates Disinformation Campaign to Conceal Surveillance Powers

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347 pointsgreenyoda133 comments

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.

How do you stop the mass surveillance machine once the gears are turning?

This is a question I ask myself frequently, and I can't find the right path to get out of this vicious cycle.

I would propose that

- all surveillance cease at some fixed moment and

- all information collected for a preceding fixed period (say 3 years', or maybe all of it) be made available for public inspection forever.

By "all" I mean just that - ALL information. Everything collected about everybody: presidents, prime ministers, senators & congressmen, corporations, churches, public and private institutions, trusts, public and private officials, their secretaries, clerks, bartenders and hired courtesans,etc - all of us would have our private information revealed.

This would cause an upheaval in the politics of the nation but would also provide a bonanza of invaluable information for society to review going forward. Do you want to know how corporate leaders break the law? Just look at the data and gather statistics. Are our politicians making illegal deals? Ditto. And of course, is my wife hiding something from me?

Allow prosecutions to proceed and the revealed information to be submitted as evidence. We might have to set up special courts and do triage to handle the influx of lawsuits and criminal arrests but we could at least get some of the rats out of the barn. Whether we burn the barn down or not is society's choice (doesn't seem we have a very good barn right now anyway - reminds me a bit of Animal House).

The more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that privacy, as we currently know it, is a short lived phenomenon due to increased anonymity of large masses of people without the corresponding technology to accurately track information coming from them. The hundred person village of the past had little anonymity. The teeming metropoli of the future will have little as well. Privacy is information, and information moves towards more access, not less. As much as it pains me to admit it, there are parallels between privacy/surveillance and patents, copyrights and DRM, but the the roles are often reversed.

That not to say it's all bad, there are some possible upsides to a world with less privacy. For example, with the lack of any expectation of privacy for vast swaths of the average day, we may see a shift to people aligning their beliefs and actions, and that may be made easier by a shift in some of the less tolerant beliefs. This would by no means be a guaranteed, it would take work.

In the end though, I think whether privacy is somehow protected or not, one of the most important things we can do is make sure we are informed of, and inform the public of, what's likely and what's possible to have intercepted by surveillance. No matter the outcome, that's useful information for everyone to have, so they can act accordingly.

Long-term, the real issue isn't the overall level of privacy or exposure in the society, but the power-gap created by privacy-inequality.

So a post-privacy society is possible, then? Everybody having dirt on everyone else accomplishes a number of positive things.

And a number of negative ones. If someone could data-mine your "true opinions", group-think and mob-mentality becomes a much bigger issue.

Also, either extreme is primed for a big disruptive phase-change if some new technology comes along that makes it easier to conceal or uncover things.

I imagine a post-privacy society is one where people necessarily either are much more tolerant of disparate opinions, or clump together more to like-minded people in enclaves of homogeneity. Possibly a little of both.

To some degree, privacy is important because people judge bases on social norms. If that is lessened, so it the benefit of privacy (not necessarily to the same degree).

Inequality is only a temporary phenomenon because information collection, storage, and processing is too expensive to be costless to the average person. That will not always be the case.

What about in States where you have a right to Privacy?

(Alaska has an absolute right to privacy in their state constitution)

IFF loss of privacy is taken as a given (a postulate of my original comment), then socially contructed laws can at best hope to stall the loss of privacy. Whether a law is written on the books about something is irrelevant if it's impossible to enforce.

Those rights will be taken about as seriously as the EU's "right to be forgotten".

While this makes for a great piece of speculative fiction; I think you underestimate the violence that the powers that be are willing to deploy to defend the present arrangement.

I don't believe we can escape it. Surveillance technology becomes cheaper everyday, in the long term tiny automated drones with cameras will be cheaper than a steak from a real cow. Even if you limit the government's power, there will be private surveillance everywhere. Even if you stop companies in your country from making them, some other country will.

Our only hope is to better align our laws with our beliefs. Removing victimless crimes like drug laws will redirect this mass surveillance machine toward violent criminals. Full transparency in the government will prevent government officials from using the surveillance for personal gain or to harm political opponents.

I don't think it is possible. It is not just the gov, it is also private and public companies. Forget snooping for a second - let us just consider the public data. Once it is out there, who knows how many organizations have it? And even if we did, how are we going to force them to destroy it and not continue collecting more data? Most people give their data willingly either out of laziness or ignorance. If I have 15 different "store cards" in my wallet and let those stores happily track every single item I buy, willingly, who is to blame?

If this is the natural progression of "information wants to be free", then it's probably worthwhile for us to figure out methods to live within this new reality. I'm not saying we shouldn't still fight it, but there should be a backup plan, in case it is futile.

The backup plan is that we are not immortal, so however bad it gets, at least no one can force us to endure it forever.

Isn't "forever" in this case "as long as one lives"? But then, it is possible to tarnish somebody's name and legacy even after their death.

Most people give their data willingly because they get something worthwhile in exchange. The store cards exist because people trade tracking of their purchase data for discounted prices. Nobody is to blame because there is nothing to blame anyone for.

Nobody is to blame because there is nothing to blame anyone for.

Suppose I have a store card for a grocery store chain. If this grocery store sells my data to a health insurance company and the insurance company increases my premium based on my food purchasing habits, do you think it is fair? I am under the reasonable assumption that my purchase history is for the grocery chain only and in return for that data, I get some discounts on my purchases.

There was a case a while ago where a forum sold their users posts to a drug company. The forum members didn't expect that. Do you think it is fair?

In both examples above, the companies are most likely acting legally (After all, who reads 20 pages of legal crap before signing up for a forum) That doesn't mean it is the right thing to do.

Insurers adjusting policies to accurately reflect risk is fantastic. They already do it now with haphazard accuracy - I get a partial rebate on any farm share or gym membership, and smoking cessation programs are on their dime completely.

It is like a child giving me a shiny rock because they like the pie I made better. Am I not to blame because I understand the value of the diamond better than the child and use the information asymmetry to my advantage?

Your example only makes sense to you because you assume that the child could sell the diamond for enough money to buy the pie from you (or from someone else who has just as good of a pie) and have some left over. In the actual situation under discussion, there is no such option.

If that's not the case and you really would only part with the pie for that high of a price, and no other pie will do for the child, then what is there to complain about? How much do you think it costs to buy a pie made by, say, Gordon Ramsay? Feel free to replace with someone who is actually a good chef and not just a famous one if I made a poor choice.

The example was to show someone taking advantage of information asymmetry. You are now just arguing the analogy. Do you believe it is acceptable to take advantage of information asymmetry when getting goods or services from someone (including children)?

I don't believe it is acceptable for there to be information asymmetry in the first place. Arguing about what to do when it's there is about as fruitful as arguing about how hard you should be allowed to beat your slaves.

I don't see how one could prevent information asymmetry. With current technology, there is no way for a 10 year old to know all that a 30 year old knows.

To me it is like asking should we allow animals to kill each other. Not only can we not really stop it, even if we could it would kill any carnivores.

That's why 10 year olds are not allowed to enter into contracts with 30 year olds.

Power is an end in itself. The war on drugs and the war on terror (and war in general) is a great way to expand it.

It's kind of funny when you think about DDR and the Stasi; the other super-power ran the other into the ground, and now that power is performing mass surveillance in place of the Stasi...

It's interesting to note "money laundering" wasn't a crime until 1985. Before then you could legally move your own money around without notifying the government.

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.

>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.

As a business are you currently less able to fire someone for being under the influence of marijuana than if they were under the influence of alcohol?

Yes. Especially when the advocates continue to say that the major use is medical. There is no medical alcohol.

Ethanol is part of the treatment for methanol poisoning.

That would be an acute care situation though, not something that would be a concern in the workplace.

While other's have brought up how ethanol in the style of (or sometimes literally) a very-high-proof vodka is used to treat methanol and ethylene glycol (antifreeze) poisoning, it is unlikely that these uses be seen outside of a hospital or other emergency medical facility.

A better question is someone who is under the influence of something that is commonly prescribed, such as opioid painkillers[1], antihistamines[2], or various psychiatric medication[3]. People are prescribed those medications for many different reasons all the time. The ability to drive or operate dangerous devices can be impacted as bad as ethanol, and many will impact attention or social interaction in various ways. It is difficult to compared these to marijuana, but it is obvious that some have much stronger reactions to these drugs.

Just like with drunk driving, the problem here is the focus on any particular drug instead of focusing on behaviors. It is similar to default-allow in computer security; trying to enumerate bad things[4] that might allow for bad behavior, the real solution is to change how the problem is framed.

Citizens concerned about safety on public roads are not actually interested in how much ethanol someone has had to drink. What matters is if someone has the necessary reflexes, fine motor skills, and situational awareness to drive safely. Ethanol consumption correlates with these problems, with a lot of variability. Instead of the breathalyzer, we should be testing the features that actually matter. This might suggest that some people cannot drive even when they are sober... which is kind of the point.

If someone shows up to work under the influence, you should evaluate if they are causing any sort of actual problem, and fire them for that. On the other hand, if they are on something but they do their job properly, then why complain?

[1] can cause to cause extreme sleepiness, dizziness, and/or nausea in some people

[2] many antihistamines - such as diphenhydramine ("Benadryl") which is over-the-counter - are well-known to be powerful deliriants. In many people normal doses can impact driving as bad as ethanol and make coherent conversation difficult.

[3] the problem here are to numerous to list. The popular antipsychotics can have almost any type of side effect you can think of, antidepressants can have unpredictable effect, and anxiolytics can cause drowsiness as bad as the opioids.

[4] http://www.ranum.com/security/computer_security/editorials/d...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antiseptic#Some_common_antisept...

Ingested alcohol is less commonly used as a medical aid, but most every hospital uses alcohol on a daily basis.

If a manager wants to fire someone they've already fucked up, why search for a reason and make up all these hypotheticals that rope in other factors?

The original cause might not stand up to legal scrutiny. Or any kind of scrutiny.

Can you explain more about the part where you can't fire people for being high at work? That seems wrong. http://www.calaborlaw.com/can-my-boss-fire-me-at-any-time-fo...

> This is exactly what the CA proposed law wanted to allow a few years back.

It's possible (likely) that it didn't pass, but that it was proposed is troubling itself.

you should always write under a pseudonym: http://cypherpunks.venona.com/date/1993/10/msg00759.html

Always liked the fact that Franklin initially published the quote:"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power." under a pseudonym. Now the fact that he published it in a work that essentially was meant as satire of his age's hipsters does make his intended meaning somewhat suspect...

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

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.

Let me propose that, for any category of job, we may create a test which is a) safe to perform and b) indicates if the worker is able to do that job.

You can therefore check, without prejudice, if a worker is capable of doing that job, without invasive inquiries about their bodies and private life. And should. And should be legally barred from otherwise testing employee competence.

These are good questions to which the answer 'the employer gets to be the judge' doesn't seem adequate.

But yes, I agree that there is a problem with the current diffuse responsibility that creates terrible incentives for everyone.

>Does it effect their job?

What happens when someone being pregnant affects their job?

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

Depends on the details of the prescription and how affected they are.

I wouldn't expect the needed doses to be very high? Then it wouldn't be an issue in the same way it shouldn't be a problem to have a single drink before work and a BAC of .02

If the prescription unavoidably interferes with work competence then I'm not sure where things go other than "complicated".

I am thinking of removing anti-discrimination laws completely (not just to create exceptions) and allowing regulators (such as anti-trust) to impose anti-discrimination conditions on specific companies instead. The idea is that most of the time we would let the market deal with discrimination instead of using the relatively expensive legal system.

Most states are at will employment so it is fairly easy to terminate someone who is unable to perform their duties (whether they're high or not.)

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.

> 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

> 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.

This is actually the opposite of what's going on in Mexico. The large drug organizations have splintered into regional groups. There is no need for fleets of planes, Mexicans drive drugs the border and smuggle them the same way they have for hundreds of years. (Through underground tunnels, empty parts of the desert, and by bribing/sneaking in through customs.)

> and smuggle them the same way they have for hundreds of years

Well, there has been some innovation.

http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/world/drug-drone-crashes-us-me...

>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...

Obviously, he means from the perspective of an economist, not a human being living in the midst of the drug hell that is being wrought upon the world by those in power.

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...

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.

The lack of a second '>' might have fooled you: sorry. The sentence is not mine, but Friedman's.

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...

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

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

It does not imply that, it implies misdirection.

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).

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.

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.

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.

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

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

>something engineering designed to be end-to-end encrypted?

Is that seriously what you believe?

How exactly do you imagine this is possible? End to end encryption means Apple cannot access the message contents.

Can you provide the source code that shows the implementation of the end-to-end encryption? Can you verify that you REALLY have Alice's public key and she has yours? Or are you trusting that the keys you're receiving from Apple's network belong to exactly who Apple says they do?

White paper on the topic: http://blog.quarkslab.com/imessage-privacy.html Consumer grade article: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/contrary-to-public-c...

Lavabit offered in-network public key encryption for its users. Its implementation was faulty and investigators only needed an SSL key to get the information they wanted from suspects. They also ordered Lavabit to keep operating under the pretense that they were secure. http://www.infoworld.com/article/2609583/encryption/how-secu...

Skype was advertised as "end-to-end" encrypted AND peer-to-peer networked for years, until it was slowly exposed as a lie. Skype's content is not end-to-end encrypted and the network is centralized. http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-mes...

Did I miss something? Why do you think the DEA can break iMessage encryption?

One doesn't need to break any encryption if one has other means of accessing the plaintext. There's a difference between disinformation and misinformation. Even the truth, told selectively, can be disinformative.

One should be careful not to live in or spread in paranoia where everything is a plot to deceive. For anyone looking at the source material and judging reasonably, there was no deception. Perhaps some journalists got a little carried away, but I'd blame that on the pressures of their industry, not malice.

The original DEA slide that was leaked says something very simple: traditional interception techniques do not work on end-to-end encrypted message services (e.g. iMessage). They can't just ask (or get a judge to ask) a law-enforcement-friendly cellular provider to tap the line and CC them on anything someone does. This is true for BBM and WebRTC and many other ways of communicating, as well.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_hangout

They can surely force by legal means Apple to give you the wrong key for a recipient, thereby defeating the end-to-end protection.

This is the danger of the new wave of security tools that want to "solve" the hard problems (such as key verification) of secure messaging. The hard problems are still there, they're usually just bypassed by centralising trust, which creates a very tempting target for government legal pressure.

You can't use the super secret laser snooper on small fish. So even if it exists, it's still reasonable to have other venues.

> 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...

At least in Australia the Supreme Court is willing to uphold a person's right to privacy.

A case[1] in South Australia in February this year went to the Supreme Court (Court of Criminal Appeal) resulting in aquittal.

A similar case (drug trafficking) in the South Australian District Court resulted in a nolle prosequi because the judge ruled the defect inspection of the vehicle illegal and struck the evidence. The ruling on that case hasn't been posted online yet.

The police will, no doubt, continue to perform illegal searches where they believe they can get away with it. But you can win against them in court here in Australia.

1. http://www.courts.sa.gov.au/Judgments/Lists/Judgments/Attach...

Citizens United was a great ruling, despite what you may have heard. People do not lose their rights just because they decide to act together. Remember what citizens united was about, it was about people releasing a film -- that's it; and the government saying that it was not ok to release X days before the election.

"Remember what citizens united was about, it was about people releasing a film -- that's it"

It was about a bit more than the pretext, the Justices' attempts at legal arguments to justify the ruling were absolutely horrifying, and the effects of the ruling have been disastrous given that it's effectively equated money with speech, permitting some citizens be more equal than others.

No, it recognizes that people aren't equal.

  1. Some are taller
  2. Some are journalists
  3. Some have lots of free time
  4. Some are famous
  5. Some own printing presses
  6. Some are politicians
  7. Some are beautiful
  8. Some are rich
  9. Some are retired  
  ...

Pretending that everyones voice is the same by removing money is wrong. It just increases the power of people with other advantages. Campaign finance laws are crazy.

"Pretending that everyones voice is the same by removing money is wrong."

I can't see how that's wrong at all. The wealthiest will always have more influence, but deliberately granting the wealthy more political influence is profoundly contrary to the principles of governance for a democratic society - it's naked plutocracy.

The American way is political equality, regardless of other factors including wealth.

As opposed to the entirety of legal history before 2010, when rich newspaper owners had just as much power to exercise free speech as scruffy-looking homeless people?

If documentation doesn't match behavior, and you're not going to change the behavior, change the documentation.

As opposed to the entirety of legal history before 2010, when rich newspaper owners had just as much power to exercise free speech as scruffy-looking homeless people?

(Shrug) The Internet has fixed that.

"If documentation doesn't match behavior, and you're not going to change the behavior, change the documentation."

I think it'd be better to fix the rules than design them to encourage things detrimental to society. We'd be better off undoing Reagan's damaging removal of the Fairness Doctrine from the FCC (which had helped fix the media issues you noted before it was gutted), than just writing rules to make plutocracy our official policy.

Whether it's detrimental is unclear. Although there are exceptions, of course, it seems fair to say that, as a general rule, people with a lot of money tend to be better educated, more intelligent, and more hardworking than those with no money. Like I said, for them to have more access to speech has been true for the entirety of human history, and it hasn't been that bad.

We don't have security, we have security theater, we don't have democracy, we have democracy theater, we don't have rule of law, we have rule of law theater ...

Is that so because we vote according to who produces best theater?

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.

The problem here is that the law also applies to the officer's behavior, and intent matters.

The officer requires probable cause for pulling the person over. The illegal turn is not the probable cause that the officer is using. The illegal surveillance is, but the officer is lying about that.

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.

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.

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.

In what world is that a "common sense" ruling?

A world where the John Robertses and Antonin Scalias don't have to worry about it happening to them.

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.

Just because something happens doesn't mean it's not morally reprehensible. Where does your cynical and tired "everyone with power is evil I just read the prince for the first time" attitude get you? The only result I see is a dismissal of concerns for the welfare of our society and culture and an excuse for ignoring any and all injustice because "that's the way the world is", i.e. complacency and tacit acceptance. You can be a student of history and unsurprised but no less outraged when these events transpire; outrage reinforces in our society the cultural belief the action is _not acceptable_. When we lose the outrage, we provide the actions with tacit support as the new norm. What exactly are you proposing instead?

Where does your cynical and tired "everyone with power is evil I just read the prince for the first time" attitude get you?

It prepares me to take the extra precautions needed to avoid being captured in these social and political "traps" time and time again.

What else?

Awareness and acceptance are always the first step.

We certainly agree about awareness; acceptance (which is a nice way of saying 'giving up') is the first step towards losing _all_ of your rights, not just some.

In this case acceptance simply means facing the ugly reality that, in the real world, actors in power will rarely if ever fail to exercise it for their benefit and not yours.

The French revolution is a great example of this Realpolitik in action. The people rose up and overthrew their monarch, only to find just a few years later that very little actually changed, except the names of the principle actors and how power was distributed.

For a more contemporary example, see the so-called revolutions of the "Arab Spring." Ask an Egyptian how that particular revolution's going for them.

The rise of statist apologetics is probably the one thing about Internet-based discussions that disturbs me the most.

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".

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)

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.

No...history shows those who forged change and overcame repression anticipated and avoided being influenced and caught up in the bullshit.

Lest we forget..."those who ignore the lessons of history blah blah blah"

As I stated in a related comment, I'm not speaking of the people who fought against such corruption and oppression. I'm speaking of the people who follow behind and eventually screw it up. That's one reason why revolutions keep happening throughout our history.

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

Because they grew out of their teenage angst:

>> 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?

Because these aren't the values we want to uphold in our public discourses. As a society we all think our leaders, our chiefs, our representatives are good people acting for the common good. This is what we want as `a people`. What we think we should strive for.

Of course we are not there (yet). But complete relative cynicism about the state of things is not going to make it happen either.

Edit: The use of the verb `expect` here is clearly not meant to be `they are all idiots who believe anything the gubment tell them`. Sheesh.

Because these aren't the values we want to uphold in our public discourses. As a society we all think our leaders, our chiefs, our representatives are good people acting for the common good.

Of course we all want that, but I'm sorry, history proves there is very little evidence that we consistantly get it, so expecting it, it seems to me, is like expecting rain in the middle of the desert.

It happens, yes, but it's a fools game waiting for it.

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

Sheeple don't like to think about being fleeced, or turned into tomorrows lamb chop. The belief in the good of the world trumps the reality of dealing with evil.

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?

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.

... 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?

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.

Because being pulled over for an illegal lane change is acceptable to the courts.

Knowing to follow someone down the highway until they make an illegal lane change, because you received intelligence from DEA/NSA electronic surveillance not approved by the courts, is not acceptable to the courts.

And that is only a problem because the enforcement capacity does not exist to pull over every person who makes an illegal lane change. The solution is, as always, more surveillance.

Probably because the evidence is factually correct. What they are concealing is how they got it.

Which goes against any full disclosure laws that may exist in those jurisdictions.

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

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

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

Before learning about paralel reconstruction, I wasn't cynical enough to conceive that they would do something this unethical.

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

Given the number of cops I see driving with no seatbelts, not indicating when turning or changing lanes, speeding without their lights or siren activated, talking on their cellphones while driving, using their in vehicle computers at red lights. How is it any surprise at all to find them breaking virtually every other law under the sun? This infuriates me, at least if you're going to be enforcing the law, lead by good example.

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.

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.

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.

Check out this obvious DEA astroturfer:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/30ydu0/cbs_federal...

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

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.

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