Confiscating the Phone Records of US Citizens

[Gaspar]

We have lost our way.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805

(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."

[patric]

Malware showed up Sunday morning on multiple websites hosted by the anonymous hosting company Freedom Hosting. That would normally be considered a blatantly criminal "drive-by" hack attack, but nobody's calling in the FBI this time. The FBI is the prime suspect.

"It just sends identifying information to some IP in Reston, Virginia," says reverse-engineer Vlad Tsyrklevich.   According to Domaintools, the malware's command-and-control IP address in Virginia is allocated to Science Applications International Corporation. SAIC is a major technology contractor for defense and intelligence agencies, including the FBI.

If Tsrklevich and other researchers are right, the code is likely the first sample captured in the wild of the FBI's "computer and internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV, the law enforcement spyware first reported by WIRED in 2007.

Court documents and FBI files released under the FOIA have described the CIPAV as software the FBI can deliver through a browser exploit to gather information from the target's machine and send it to an FBI server in Virginia. The FBI has been using the CIPAV since 2002.

The heart of the malicious Javascript is a tiny Windows executable hidden in a variable named "Magneto." A traditional virus would use that executable to download and install a full-featured backdoor, so the hacker could come in later and steal passwords, enlist the computer in a DDoS botnet, and generally do all the other nasty things that happen to a hacked Windows box.

It looks up the victim's MAC address — a unique hardware identifier for the computer's network or Wi-Fi card — and the victim's Windows hostname. Then it sends it to the Virginia server.

In short, Magneto reads like the x86 machine code embodiment of a carefully crafted court order authorizing an agency to blindly trespass into the personal computers of a large number of people, but for the limited purpose of identifying them.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/08/freedom-hosting/

[Vashta Nerada]

We have lost our way.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-idUSBRE97409R20130805

That lucky traffic stop for improper use of turn signal that netted a bale of marijuana?  ...not luck, but information gathered from illegal wiretaps:

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.

A former federal agent in the northeastern United States 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."

One current federal prosecutor learned how agents were using SOD tips after a drug agent misled him, the prosecutor told Reuters. In a Florida drug case he was handling, the prosecutor said, a DEA agent told him the investigation of a U.S. citizen began with a tip from an informant. When the prosecutor pressed for more information, he said, a DEA supervisor intervened and revealed that the tip had actually come from an NSA intercept.

"You can't game the system," said former federal prosecutor Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. "You can't create this subterfuge. These are drug crimes, not national security cases. If you don't draw the line here, where do you draw it?"

How these look in the local media:

Published: 8/14/2010 10:19 pm
The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics finds nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana inside a trailer in East Tulsa. Agents made the bust Saturday afternoon near Admiral & 122nd East Avenue. OBN says the drugs are worth $1.2 million on the streets. Agents made the bust after getting a tip from a concerned citizen. The agency says the drugs are most likely from Mexico. Three people have been arrested but their names have not been released.

Published: 4/17/2010 3:20 pm
Tulsa police find 1,500 pounds of marijuana inside a trailer in East Tulsa. TPD says two officers saw a Ford F350 with Mississippi tags and a 20 ft. enclosed trailer sitting in a parking lot at 27th and Memorial, just after midnight Saturday. Officers then searched the vehicle and found the illegal drugs. TPD says it is still unclear whether the marijuana was intended for Tulsa.

[Gaspar]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/uk-dea-irs-idUKBRE9761B620130807

(Reuters) - Details of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by agents of the Internal Revenue Service for two years.

[patric]

Did Faux News suddenly have an epiphany?

Domestic spying is dangerous to freedom

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
How is it that the government can charge Edward Snowden with espionage for telling a journalist that the feds have been spying on all Americans and many of our allies, but the NSA itself, in a public relations campaign intended to win support for its lawlessness, can reveal secrets and do so with impunity? That question goes to the heart of the rule of law in a free society.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/08/08/domestic-spying-is-dangerous-to-freedom/


It's hard to imagine they would turn on one of Bush's pet programs, unless...

Since Snowden's June 6th revelations about massive NSA spying, we have learned that all Americans who communicate via telephone or the Internet (who doesn't?) have had all of their communications swept up by the federal government for two-plus years.  


Oh, yeah, right.

[Gaspar]

Did Faux News suddenly have an epiphany?

Domestic spying is dangerous to freedom

By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano
How is it that the government can charge Edward Snowden with espionage for telling a journalist that the feds have been spying on all Americans and many of our allies, but the NSA itself, in a public relations campaign intended to win support for its lawlessness, can reveal secrets and do so with impunity? That question goes to the heart of the rule of law in a free society.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/08/08/domestic-spying-is-dangerous-to-freedom/


It's hard to imagine they would turn on one of Bush's pet programs, unless...

Since Snowden's June 6th revelations about massive NSA spying, we have learned that all Americans who communicate via telephone or the Internet (who doesn't?) have had all of their communications swept up by the federal government for two-plus years.  


Oh, yeah, right.

Nap is a Libertarian.  He was long before he was a sitting judge back in the 80s and 90s.  He has always been extremely critical of both Republicans and Democrats, and generally anyone who serves but is unwilling to live the word of the constitution.

He has written several great books:
What Happens When the Government Breaks its Own Laws
Dred Scott's Revenge: A Legal History of Race and Freedom in America
The Constitution in Exile: How the Federal Government Has Seized Power by Rewriting the Supreme Law of the Land
A Nation of Sheep
It is Dangerous to be Right When the Government is Wrong: The Case for Personal Freedom
Lies the Government Told You: Myth, Power, and Deception in American History

He was far more critical of Bush.  He thought that Bush and Cheney should be jailed.
http://thinkprogress.org/media/2008/02/20/19701/napolitano-wiretapping/

[Gaspar]

Internet Provider Lavabit shuts down amid Snoden investigation.

This was Snoden's email provider.

http://lavabit.com/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/08/snowdens-e-mail-provider-is-closing-cannot-legally-say-why/

Other secure private services now following suit.

http://gizmodo.com/another-secure-email-service-silent-circle-is-shuttin-1075763867

[Vashta Nerada]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/08/07/uk-dea-irs-idUKBRE9761B620130807

(Reuters) - Details of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration program that feeds tips to federal agents and then instructs them to alter the investigative trail were published in a manual used by agents of the Internal Revenue Service for two years.

We know these arent chance "traffic stops" but the lying doesnt miss a beat:

An illegal lane change in downtown Oklahoma City led to the discovery of 200 pounds of marijuana in a van, the Oklahoma County sheriff reported Monday.

http://newsok.com/downtown-oklahoma-city-traffic-stop-ends-in-pot-bust/article/3871396

[Gaspar]

So, we bugged the UN last year.
Obama Administration Buggs the UN



Absolute power = absolute corruption. 
NSA Workers Spy on Love Interests

[heironymouspasparagus]

So, we bugged the UN last year.

Absolute power = absolute corruption.  

So you admit that Nixon, Reagan, and Bush were absolutely corrupt...!!

Since they all did that and more.

[Hoss]

So you admit that Nixon, Reagan, and Bush were absolutely corrupt...!!

Since they all did that and more.

It's that faux outrage that permeates that side of the aisle.  It's ok to do it.  Only when our guy is in the seat.

It really should NEVER be ok to do it.

[heironymouspasparagus]

It's that faux outrage that permeates that side of the aisle.  It's ok to do it.  Only when our guy is in the seat.

It really should NEVER be ok to do it.

Had the occasion to listen to Fox News surrogate - KRMG for about an hour last Friday after 5 until 6.  Time after time after time they reported on the Hasan plea deal and how it was just so far beyond the pale that he would get off without the event being labeled "act of terror" for murdering 13 people.  And not one time did they mention Robert Bales and his life without parole easy street sentence....for murdering 16 people.  Wouldn't that, too, be an "act of terror"??  But they did manage to talk a lot about the important stuff of the day....the massive controversy swirling around Ben Affleck as Batman!!  Oh, the horror of it all....

[Townsend]

the massive controversy swirling around Ben Affleck as Batman!!  Oh, the horror of it all....

I'm not terribly excited about that either.

[Gaspar]

It really should NEVER be ok to do it.

Bingo!  It was, and is never ok!

But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies. – Alan Watts

[Gaspar]

Had the occasion to listen to Fox News surrogate - KRMG for about an hour last Friday after 5 until 6.  Time after time after time they reported on the Hasan plea deal and how it was just so far beyond the pale that he would get off without the event being labeled "act of terror" for murdering 13 people.  And not one time did they mention Robert Bales and his life without parole easy street sentence....for murdering 16 people.  Wouldn't that, too, be an "act of terror"??  But they did manage to talk a lot about the important stuff of the day....the massive controversy swirling around Ben Affleck as Batman!!  Oh, the horror of it all....

The bigger debate there is that by not labeling an obvious act of terror as such, the government gets out of paying the survivors and their families any combat benefits.  It was also an obvious  political move so that the administration could claim "no act of terror" on their watch.  It was a rather despicable political act in a long chain of despicable political acts by our attorney general.

Hassan himself said that he wanted to kill American military men and women so that they would not go to Afghanistan and kill his fellow Muslims.  It is an admitted act of terror, no matter how you wish to parse it.