Do bombshells explode if nobody sees them land?
by digby
I was just revisiting the USA Today bombshell from earlier this week (a bombshell about which nobody gives a damn apparently) and noticed this:
The DEA used its data collection extensively and in ways that the NSA is now prohibited from doing. Agents gathered the records without court approval, searched them more often in a day than the spy agency does in a year and automatically linked the numbers the agency gathered to large electronic collections of investigative reports, domestic call records accumulated by its agents and intelligence data from overseas.
The result was “a treasure trove of very important information on trafficking,” former DEA administrator Thomas Constantine said in an interview.
The extent of that surveillance alarmed privacy advocates, who questioned its legality. “This was aimed squarely at Americans,” said Mark Rumold, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That’s very significant from a constitutional perspective.”
Holder halted the data collection in September 2013 amid the fallout from Snowden’s revelations about other surveillance programs.
I realize that Edward Snowden is very “smug and entitled” as the brave crusading journalist Jonathan Capehart characterized him just last week on Hardball (following the constitutional scholar Carole King’s assessment that what Snowden did was very wrong.) But still, it would seem that his revelations may have made the Justice Department decide that the DEA needed to get a subpoena before they wiretapped Americans “suspected” of God-knows-what. I’m sure it’s a big inconvenience for them. After all, they’ve been doing this for 20 years without anyone questioning them. So thanks Ed.
Again folks, this was the drug war. If there’s anyone but Nancy Reagan who still thinks that ridiculous program was ever worth spending more than a dollar and change on I don’t know who it is.
And lest we think Holder’s belated decision to end the program once it was revealed that the US Government was routinely spying on just about everyone shows that the government is responsible, take a look at what’s going on in one local police department to see just how pervasive this Orwellian system really is:
On Black Friday, 2014, the biggest shopping day of the year, hundreds of protesters marched to Wicker Park, a trendy neighborhood on Chicago’s northwest side. It was the third stop in a day-long march from one commercial district to the next: starting at downtown’s Magnificent Mile, then heading north to an Apple Store, then west. Four days after the grand jury decision not to indict Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown, the event was part of a nationwide action decrying complacent consumerism in the face of a national tragedy. Wicker Park’s retail epicenter seemed an appropriate place to go.
A Chicago police officer, however, couldn’t figure out the route. He took to his radio and called in a request to the local “fusion center,” the Chicago Police Department (CPD) intelligence hub. “One of the girls, she’s kind of an organizer here, she’s been on her phone a lot. You guys picking up any information, uh, where they’re going, possibly?” the officer asked.
“Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on it.”
The conversation was quick, but when the audio from the call leaked online, activists saw proof of something they’d long suspected: Chicago police were tracking their cell phones, using a controversial new technology.
The StingRay—both a brand name and a generic term—is a suitcase-sized device that acts as a wiretap for the wireless age. But while a wiretap monitors a single line, a stingray acts like a roving cell phone tower, vacuuming in data from all nearby phones, tablets and other wireless devices. This includes call history and current and previous locations. Enhanced stingrays can also record and eavesdrop on phone calls.
An assortment of add-ons are now available: The FishHawk listens in on calls; the Harpoon broadens the StingRay’s range; the AmberJack antenna helps pinpoint individual phones; the KingFish analyzes call patterns, doing in one stroke what might have taken Detective Lester Freamon an entire season of The Wire to accomplish.
U.S. military and intelligence agencies developed stingray technology in the 1990s, and police departments began using it as early as 2003. Before receiving StingRays, police departments must sign non-disclosure agreements. It wasn’t until 2011, when the FBI presented information gathered from a stingray in court, that domestic use of the devices came to public attention. Civil liberties groups immediately sounded the alarm.
The ACLU says stingrays violate privacy rights because they capture information from every phone in the vicinity, not just a suspect’s. There are also concerns regarding Fourth Amendment restrictions on unreasonable search and seizure, since stingrays can penetrate the walls of a home and track a person’s movements even while inside.
The ACLU has identified at least 48 state and local law enforcement agencies that are using stingrays. While the Harris Corporation, maker of the StingRay brand device, assured the FCC the devices were for emergency use only (because they interfere with cell networks), the few available examples of their deployment show they are used for routine police work—and to spy on peaceful activists.
I urge you to read the whole thing. I’m reeling.
But hey, if you aren’t a peace activist you’ve got nothing to worry about, amirite? If you don’t want to have the police monitoring your calls, don’t be in the vicinity of someone who might be committing a crime or participating in political activity. And don’t worry, the police never make mistakes or engage in corruption so “good guys” like you have nothing to be concerned about. There are no innocent people in jail.
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