Constitutional Law, Politics

It Was Never About Terrorism

-Submitted by David Drumm (Nal), Guest Blogger

drug seizureWe have previously discussed the pathetic attempt to justify the seizure of every American’s phone data based on its “contribution” in apprehending terrorists. We also discussed the conflating of successful NSA programs overseas with the domestic metadata collection to give the impression that the domestic collection is contributing to the hunt for terrorists. The massive NSA surveillance utterly failed to detect the Boston Marathon bombings. It is not surprising that government officials would try to connect the NSA surveillance with terrorism prevention: polls suggest that Americans are more willing to accept the surveillance if it helps reduce the threat of terrorism. However, there is a lucrative and successful use of the NSA’s collection of all communications – the Drug War.

A secretive unit of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Special Operations Division (SOD) has been working with the NSA and its massive database to detect illegal drug activity and then route that information to local authorities. Federal agents are trained to cover up the origins of the information. Harvard Law School professor Nancy Gertner noted that: “It is one thing to create special rules for national security. Ordinary crime is entirely different.”

An example occurs when the SOD tells state police to look for a specific vehicle at a specific location at a specific time. The trooper then pulls the vehicle over for some real or imagined infraction and a “clever” drug dog named Hans is brought in. The investigation looks like it began with the traffic stop and the SOD tip is never revealed. This process is known as “parallel construction,” and is used to hide the unwarranted origin of information.

Vice chairman of the criminal justice section of the American Bar Association, James Felman, says “It strikes me as indefensible.” Concealment of the circumstances under which a case begins “would not only be alarming but pretty blatantly unconstitutional” according to defense attorney Lawrence Lustberg. Ezekiel Edwards, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Criminal Law Reform Project said: “The DEA is violating our fundamental right to a fair trial. Our due process rights are at risk when our federal government hides and distorts the sources of evidence used as the basis for arrests and prosecutions.”

Another DEA coverup technique is to claim the information came from an informant. A current federal prosecutor pressing a DEA agent for more information and was finally told by a DEA supervisor that the tip had come from SOD via a NSA intercept. The federal prosecutor was so irate about being lied to, the prosecutor never filed charges.

The appeal of drug-related asset forfeiture provides the motivation. Proceeds from asset forfeiture provide an inexhaustible supply of police jurisdictions eager to play the “parallel construction” game. As long as they get a piece of the action.

http://www.jamiolsworld.com/
http://www.jamiolsworld.com/

However, all is not lost for defense attorneys. Any large drug seizure where the vehicle just “happened” to be pulled over is a red flag. Why did the officer select this vehicle to pull over while giving numerous other vehicles a pass for the same infraction? When the officer gets on the stand to testify about his reasons for the stop, an attorney familiar with the use of Bayes’ Theorem can show that the officer is probably, can reasonably assumed to be, lying. The hypothesis being tested is that the officer pulled over a particular vehicle only because of a traffic infraction. The probability of a vehicle getting a pass for the same infraction from the same officer is the key.

Below is a video of Dr. Richard Carrier explaining the use of Bayes’ Theorem:

H/T: Juan Cole, John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke, Brian Fung, Kevin Drum, Emma Roller, Ilya Somin.

58 thoughts on “It Was Never About Terrorism”

  1. OS. I was unaware of how it may have been along $$$ lines. Funny how it gets bipartisan when cash and lobbyists are involved.
    (And what happened to Occupy? Where are the protestors? Is it fear or lassitude?)

  4. I have not had the time to research this tidbit, but it sounds about right. As everyone knows, the vote to reauthorize the odious “Patriot Act,” was bipartisan more or less. According to the story I read, the vote broke along lines of congresscritters who got the most money from the defense and security industry instead of strict party lines.

    Somebody with more time and energy than me this morning may want to fact-check it. I would do it, but I have some chores I can’t put off any longer.

  5. On June 9th, I posted a story titled, The Security State: It’s Getting Worse For Ordinary Citizens–General Aviation is now Targeted.

    Since the illegal armed stops and searches I reported on, including that of Mr. Gabriel Silverstein in Iowa City, the Aircraft Owners and Pilot’s Association (APOA) has been pressing the CBP for more information under the FOIA. At first, the CBP told AOPA’s lawyers to kiss off. Pressed for more information, they now “cannot find” any records of those illegal stop and searches. Or why the Customs and Border Patrol is conducting armed raids on domestic light-plane flights in places like Iowa.

    The latest online weekly news report from AOPA has more on the story, and it is getting better or more scary, depending on your perspective.

  7. I am completely ashamed and disgusted with my own species! Sewer rats are more productive and civilized than us humans. Greedy, self serving, parasites! Roaches are more worthy than we! Great! We have evolved, and God blessed us with analytical and creative minds. Our egocentric, self serving minds have abused a precious and sacred gift from God into a weapon of mass destruction, plaguing everything we touch! The human vessel deploys white blood cells to defend and attack foreign bodies to prevent hostile and potentially fatal invasions. WHEN OUR MOTHER EARTH TAKES BACK WHAT IS HERS THERE WILL BE NO AMMOUNT OF $ TO PROTECT THOSE WHO ARE PLAYING GOD!

  8. Excellent. Timely. To the point.

    End the “War on Civil Rights” in the name of private profits, militarized police, bloated budgets and hyper-inflated political egos. Drugs are a health problem. Trying to address that problem with the criminal law is like trying to fix a car with a pipe wrench. Wrong tool. Trying to address that problem by violating our rights? Simply unacceptable. Provocative as well, in the meaning of the word “to provoke”.

    Keep spying on Americans, Washington.

    That way you might see the whites of Our Eyes when We come for you.

    This kind of fascist draconian nonsense is how you provoke civil wars.

    Didn’t any of you clowns read history? How about the Constitution? Did you understand it? Or were the concepts too far over your head or in conflict with your greed, paranoia and narcissism?

    End the “War of Drugs”.
    End the Patriot Act.
    Shut down the DHS.
    Reign in the NSA.

  9. I believe this is just one side of the ‘money coin’, we have CIA helping whole countries to bring in their drugs, this is sometimes one of their biggest exports. We’re talking hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars here.

    Sure the CIA might finance some wars with the dough, but I have to believe revenue that size has to have people skimming off large portions.

    20 states have legalized pot, but the Feds continue to try to arrest people with state licenses to grow it!!

    The only reason I can guess is there are a LOT of people getting paid off on Government drugs imports for them to keep on with this ruse.

  10. I posted one of James Pence’s videos in Mike Spindell’s excellent blog article this morning. Looking for that one reminded me of one he made several years ago which went viral. In case someone missed it, here is The Hillbilly explaining how to be an effective terrorist:

  11. The DEA has been out of control for a long time. I cannot speak to illegal drug issues (other then as a non lawyer it certainly seems not only blatantly unconstitutional but anti any American ideals (that we used to have -or so I thought) but they have inserted themselves into every pain management doctor’s examining room.

  12. Regarding the portion of the article referring to the bad cops who employ dogs for drug alerts. When are the lawyers in America going to learn the basics of the hearsay rules? When that dog tells the cop that there is pot in the trunk of the car it is a statement. When the cop repeats it, it is hearsay. Hearsay of the Dog should not be an exception to the hearsay rules of evidence. All the cops have to do now is have a dog in every cop car and they can search any person’s car that they want. Duh.

  13. David,

    Well put and quite important. The “War on Drugs” is a phony quest and the monster it has created, namely the DEA, has far overstepped the bounds of the Constitution. They seem to be everywhere. When Tsarnev was surrounded in the boat in Boston you could clearly see DEA trucks and personnel, what were they doing there. The explanation was “backup” but the truth is the DEA has gone far beyond its mission and has become yet another adjunct of a police state mentality.

  14. It was never about “just phone data”. How are we communicating here folks? By our computers. That is how big business communicates. It is how journalists communicate and how Koch Bros talk to Romney. When you put the discussion into the context of telephone then they , the government, jumps to the statement that they do not tap your telephone with a recording device unless they have a warrant. And bla bla.

    The big deal here is the internet folks and the theft of your mind. If I say: MusBro from Toledo then this particular message gets picked up and explored further. Then if I say Bomb, Bomb, Iran, Oh, Bomb Iraaaan, I’ll take my staaaaand. I might be quoting Saturday Night Live from thirty years ago to make the point that the administration is talking touch on Syria but being lame on Iran. But the metadata machine will pick that up and really put the message in the higher notch of the metadata effort. Tomorrow there will be some schmuck here at the dog pac asking who the hell itchinBayDog is and is she not really a human. And HumpinDog is gonna poop on his foot while he is looking in windows.

  15. Gongratulations Osama Bin Laden…. you won the War… You DESTROYED AMERICA!!!!

  16. Using unConstituional means to spy on Americans to “detect” crime or “terrorist” activities in the name of “national security” is not different when it comes to analyzing it in terms of the CONSITUTION. The constitution contains no “national security” exception. In fact it is likely the the founders would not have included such an exception because many of the abuses that were sought to be curbed were activities the the Crown engaged in not to catch pick pockets but rather to deal with threats against the Crown, that is “nationa security”. In my opinion Professor Gertner is wrong. The government is I think not really interested in either one. The NSA and related activities is about power and its use. Alleged reasons are quite frankly in my opinion nothing more that a cover for using that power. The very very attractive side benefit is all the money that is generated for corporations and government agencies in the process.

    Thanks for another thought provoking post.

  17. There is more illegal collusion between govt. agencies than I ever remember. The DEA is giving tips to the IRS from investigations they’ve conducted. That may be legal but I don’t know because the IRS manual has instructions on how TO COVER IT UP..IN THE MANUAL! Probably the DEA doesn’t want to blow their cover in an active investigation. The IRS sharing information w/ the FEC is another troubling connection. The NSA has always been the most shadowy part of out intelligence community. We now know why.

  18. Excellent…..

    Gotta get a return on the investment…. Since the war on drugs has proved to be an utter failure…..

    Question…. Will the US use the drone against Snowden since the US considers him a domestic terrorist…. Lodged on foreign… Enemy soils….

Comments are closed.