This is a news that I recently came across with, despite is not new, I believe still valuable to share.
I have taken deep reads in the documents leaked by Edward Snowden about the massive surveillance perpetrated by the NSA and CIA. Also the Vault7 leak, documents where you can find information about how the CIA hack our operating systems in order to circumvent peer to peer encryption protocols, rendering our apps like Whatsapp, Wickr and Signal useless against this attack. Since gets our information before it gets encrypted by the apps.
I always wondered if they would handed over useful information gathered by their illegal wiretaps and eavesdropping surveillance programs, regarding common crime to entities as DEA, FBI and even local police departments. Now my greatest fear turns out to be true and confirmed.
How this unit operates is really shady, everything begins with an anonymous tip received by a supervisor of the DEA, in where tells him to intercept certain car, at certain location, under certain excuse. Then they proceed to alert the local police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle and search for goods on it. After the arrest is made, agents then pretend that the investigation began with the traffic stop, they never told anyone about the tip, not even the prosecutor, judge or defendant. Instead, they conceal this information as parallel construction, because the tips usually come from NSA or CIA. When the investigation really begins with one of this tips provided to SOD, agents are told not to revealed or discussed in any way investigative SOD's function.
This clearly makes the defense lawyer's job harder because if defendants don't know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence. The right to a fair trail is with no doubt violated in a such scenario. You might ask, how is that defendant and their lawyers never realize of such occurrence? That's because most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of exposing SOD involvement.
The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called Special Operations Division or SOD. This is a secretive unit in charge of funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, and even illegal surveillance programs.
If you ever got lazy to use all the security and anonymity masseurs as always and decided to go for easier but less safe communication channel, it's time to think about what you shared, who you shared with, and how compromised your OpSec might be. My objective here is not to spread FUD, no. My real objective is to remember you to keep separate your identities, don't ever mix your real identity with you anonymous online identity. Even if you feel safe using Signal, even if you believe nobody would ever understand you senseless conversations; eventually someone will connect the dots of your metadata and content, and you will never see it coming.
Over and over, these news reports come out revealing the shady behavior of our intelligence agencies and law enforecement. And every time, everyone acts all shocked and appalled. The idea of ending up on "a list" is now common knowledge and usually referenced in a joking way.
I don't know why everyone is so surprised by news like this. Even when Snowden first published his "revelations", I wasn't the least bit surprised to learn that the government is spying on everyone.
Since then, it's only gotten worse. But any outrage that people had at the time has been completely replaced by complacency. It's pretty disgusting to be honest how little people care about their privacy.