DEA has special unit to receive Intel from NSA and CIA to target suspects.

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.

Source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-dea-sod/exclusive-u-s-directs-agents-to-cover-up-program-used-to-investigate-americans-idUSBRE97409R20130805


Comments


[28 Points] Quick_review_throwaw:

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.


[8 Points] Quick_review_throwaw:

(1/2)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin - not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence - information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

“I have never heard of anything like this at all,” said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School professor who served as a federal judge from 1994 to 2011. Gertner and other legal experts said the program sounds more troubling than recent disclosures that the National Security Agency has been collecting domestic phone records. The NSA effort is geared toward stopping terrorists; the DEA program targets common criminals, primarily drug dealers.

“It is one thing to create special rules for national security,” Gertner said. “Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations.”

The unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD. Two dozen partner agencies comprise the unit, including the FBI, CIA, NSA, Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Homeland Security. It was created in 1994 to combat Latin American drug cartels and has grown from several dozen employees to several hundred.

Today, much of the SOD’s work is classified, and officials asked that its precise location in Virginia not be revealed. The documents reviewed by Reuters are marked “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” a government categorization that is meant to keep them confidential.

“Remember that the utilization of SOD cannot be revealed or discussed in any investigative function,” a document presented to agents reads. The document specifically directs agents to omit the SOD’s involvement from investigative reports, affidavits, discussions with prosecutors and courtroom testimony. Agents are instructed to then use “normal investigative techniques to recreate the information provided by SOD.”

A spokesman with the Department of Justice, which oversees the DEA, declined to comment.

But two senior DEA officials defended the program, and said trying to “recreate” an investigative trail is not only legal but a technique that is used almost daily.

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ And so we’d alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it,” the agent said.

After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as “parallel construction.”

The two senior DEA officials, who spoke on behalf of the agency but only on condition of anonymity, said the process is kept secret to protect sources and investigative methods. “Parallel construction is a law enforcement technique we use every day,” one official said. “It’s decades old, a bedrock concept.”

A dozen current or former federal agents interviewed by Reuters confirmed they had used parallel construction during their careers. Most defended the practice; some said they understood why those outside law enforcement might be concerned.

“It’s just like laundering money - you work it backwards to make it clean,” said Finn Selander, a DEA agent from 1991 to 2008 and now a member of a group called Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which advocates legalizing and regulating narcotics.

Some defense lawyers and former prosecutors said that using “parallel construction” may be legal to establish probable cause for an arrest. But they said employing the practice as a means of disguising how an investigation began may violate pretrial discovery rules by burying evidence that could prove useful to criminal defendants.

“That’s outrageous,” said Tampa attorney James Felman, a vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association. “It strikes me as indefensible.”

Lawrence Lustberg, a New Jersey defense lawyer, said any systematic government effort to conceal the circumstances under which cases begin “would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional.”


[2 Points] STFUMandy:

I'm the DEA Blah Blah Blah your going to jail Blah Blah Blah. If you tell me where the drugs are I'll let you pet the sniffer dog Blah Blah Blaaaaaaah.


[1 Points] None:

wow, it must suck to live under so much scrutiny.


[1 Points] MandyThatGirl:

Did you assume we didn't already know all this....already?

When you assume you take the ass out of ume. Just remember that.


[1 Points] detroitmi313:

This has been going on forever. You think everybody getting pulled over for petty traffic violations and popped with drugs is a coincidence, not so the eye in the Sky...


[1 Points] mfsocialist:

Fuck the NSA fuck the CIA, aint stoppin me from getting my drugs. Fucking losers


[1 Points] xxyy789:

Internet security is pretty common sense yet most people choose to ignore the importance of it. I’m sure most of us here already know this but a friendly reminder every once in a while is more than welcomed.

Cheers