SOD: Allegations of illegal cross-agency data sharing by the NSA

[mynym]

Reuters reports that - since the late 1990s - the NSA has been funneling its spying information to agencies throughout the country to prosecute petty crimes:
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.

[F]ederal 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. via Zerohedge

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An interesting contrast: PRISM isn't Data Mining

The way things are headed more soldiers sent off to fight to infuse value in the bankster's petrodollar will come home and be killed by the DEA or SWAT teams breaking into their house based on "phonied up investigations." I hadn't notice that intelligence agencies and the Military Inc. had a problem with dealing drugs. Apparently people only have a problem with drugs when a veteran is trying to grow some natural and harmless drugs for themselves for free at a local level instead of using the psychotropics provided to them by large corporations and the type of central government that's being created and financed by central bankers.

 

[Mick West]

Did someone ever says that NSA spying was just Metadata? You headline is very misleading. Please think of a better one.

 

[Josh Heuer]

Did someone ever says that NSA spying was just Metadata? You headline is very misleading. Please think of a better one.

Honestly, I originally thought that's all they collected. I was under the impression that when information about PRISM was released, the stories on it claimed they collected metadata only. Which in all honesty, thinking back, it seems like that must have just been cover up to 'soften the blow' about what the program was actually for.
What's worse...the government's agencies collecting specifics like exactly what an email says or exactly what you're typing on your keyboard...or them simply collecting metadata like the size of an email, how long you were on the phone, etc. it tends to make people feel like their privacy isn't quite being invaded, especially in the name of 'national security'

Seems like the more we learn about these programs, the more we realize they're collecting anything they can get on anyone. After all, it's for national security purposes, right?

 

[Mick West]

NSA collects foreign communications in full. They always have.

The story in the OP above is vastly misleading because it's about the DEA, not the NSA. The story is really about how (allegedly) the DEA sometimes gets (illegal) tips from the NSA about stuff the NSA has overhead in their surveillance of foreign communications.

 

[Mick West]

Headline updated to reflect the actual story, original headline:
"NSA spying is not just metadata."

 

[mynym]

Did someone ever says that NSA spying was just Metadata? You headline is very misleading. Please think of a better one.

It seemed like that's what some people here were "just" thinking, as unlikely as that was from the perspective of theorists. But I don't mind the change in the headline.

In any event, perhaps it's always going to be just this or just that for some... until it isn't. Panic!!! Just kidding. I don't have much use for getting fearful or panicky about things either. But I do want to try to know what's going on in reality, even if that might be scary from some perspectives.

 

[mynym]

What's worse...the government's agencies collecting specifics like exactly what an email says or exactly what you're typing on your keyboard...or them simply collecting metadata like the size of an email, how long you were on the phone, etc. it tends to make people feel like their privacy isn't quite being invaded, especially in the name of 'national security'?

I don't really care about any of that or your feelings and so forth. It's not really about your phone conversations and so forth. This will corrupt the government. It's about the possibility of their or the phone conversations of powerful and influential people turning up at a key stroke. I.e... more important information than what you want to have for dinner ro the latest cat video turning up, etc.

After all, we already know that they're being blackmailed and that other attempts have been made.

Many Americans immediately frame this issue as being about themselves or their privacy, as if it's about the NSA listening in on their boring and trivial conversations or scanning their emails for key words. "Well, I have nothing to hide." Indeed. Who cares. It's not about you. Believe it or not, the world doesn't revolve around you. It's about the type of government and media that people are going to wind up with and are already winding up with due to the centralization of power and the lack of checks and balances and the rule of law.

It's not about spying on some suburban soccer mom that doesn't even know what her civil rights are. Although it is about her tangentially, given that it's her husband or brother or her son or daughter that will be sent to war if enough politicians or political operatives or journalists can be successfully blackmailed, etc. It's also about her tangentially, if she has a 401K that winds up being looted by NSA/government insider traders and so forth that have access to information on everyone and their finances.

With respect to blackmail, some people have already tried to blackmail others even when nothing comes up in their databases (like it apparently did for Petraeus):

The increasingly kleptocratic attempts by the government to silence Edmonds were sometimes Kafkaesque. Instructed by a supervisor to secretly prepare a memo at home so no one might access it on her office computer she was later threatened by the same supervisor with possible criminal charges for doing classified work on an unsecured machine, which was subsequently confiscated. When Edmonds finally went to trial in a challenge to her gag order, the panel of three federal judges required her and her lawyers to leave the room while the government presented its case “due to the sensitivity and secrecy involved.” Not surprisingly, the court upheld the State Secrets Privilege and to this day Edmonds has never been informed of the actual charges against her.
Sibel Edmonds’s Secrets

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Kind of funny, I can only imagine: "Did you find anything on Edmonds?" "Uh.. well, there's this old parking ticket."

 

[Mick West]

Less speculation, more facts please.

 

[Josh Heuer]

I don't really care about any of that or your feelings and so forth. It's not really about your phone conversations and so forth. This will corrupt the government. It's about the possibility of their or the phone conversations of powerful and influential people turning up at a key stroke. I.e... more important information than what you want to have for dinner ro the latest cat video turning up, etc.

After all, we already know that they're being blackmailed and that other attempts have been made.

Many Americans immediately frame this issue as being about themselves or their privacy, as if it's about the NSA listening in on their boring and trivial conversations or scanning their emails for key words. "Well, I have nothing to hide." Indeed. Who cares. It's not about you. Believe it or not, the world doesn't revolve around you. It's about the type of government and media that people are going to wind up with and are already winding up with due to the centralization of power and the lack of checks and balances and the rule of law.

It's not about spying on some suburban soccer mom that doesn't even know what her civil rights are. Although it is about her tangentially, given that it's her husband or brother or her son or daughter that will be sent to war if enough politicians or political operatives or journalists can be successfully blackmailed, etc. It's also about her tangentially, if she has a 401K that winds up being looted by NSA/government insider traders and so forth that have access to information on everyone and their finances.

With respect to blackmail, some people have already tried to blackmail others even when nothing comes up in their databases (like it apparently did for Petraeus):

The increasingly kleptocratic attempts by the government to silence Edmonds were sometimes Kafkaesque. Instructed by a supervisor to secretly prepare a memo at home so no one might access it on her office computer she was later threatened by the same supervisor with possible criminal charges for doing classified work on an unsecured machine, which was subsequently confiscated. When Edmonds finally went to trial in a challenge to her gag order, the panel of three federal judges required her and her lawyers to leave the room while the government presented its case “due to the sensitivity and secrecy involved.” Not surprisingly, the court upheld the State Secrets Privilege and to this day Edmonds has never been informed of the actual charges against her.
Sibel Edmonds’s Secrets

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Kind of funny, I can only imagine: "Did you find anything on Edmonds?" "Uh.. well, there's this old parking ticket."

But, it is about 'me.' And every single 'me' out their who believes in privacy. I should be able to do and say what I want on my phone or computer. I DO have something to hide. It's what privacy is; as an individual I feel some things about me or some things I say or do don't need to be revealed to anyone but those I choose. Our own government tells us we don't need privacy ('if we have nothing to hide') yet at the same time there is classified information which of course, is explained away in the sake of 'national security.' Our 'national security' deserves privacy but our individuals don't.
The point is that it IS about us, the individual, and we are the individuals who are supposed to be shaping our government and helping make change for the better. But instead it's working the other way around; our government is shaping us and the way we (some of us) make our choices.

 

[mynym]

But, it is about 'me.' And every single 'me' out their who believes in privacy.

Tangentially, yes.

I'm just saying that the private sex conversations* of American citizens that the NSA was listening in on and is listening in on don't matter as much as when it's Petraeus or others that you don't hear about from the lazy and trendy journalists and crackheads in the corporate media. Because there is evidence that globalists/psychopaths have access to that information and they're the type of people with a history of manipulating people to create wars.

Anyway, sure I care about your privacy too... to some extent. But I'm not crying myself to sleep over it. Sorry, you don't matter as much as the people that have the power to get other people killed.

*E.g.

US Soldier's 'Phone Sex' Intercepted, Shared
Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer.

"Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News. Link

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Hopefully the generals and CIA chiefs like Petraeus have secure and private lines of communication so that it's not possible that we're being led into wars based on pretty much nothing but the interests of the multinational/globalist banksters that own the petrodollar with some international PNAC/AIPAC/Zionist factions thrown in the mix, huh? Here's an interesting concept, if the NSA can spy on internationals and so forth then shouldn't all dual citizens be targeted for special monitoring and American citizens left alone?

 

[Josh Heuer]

While you may find this issue disturbing at levels pertaining to high ranking officials and 'generals and CIA chiefs', I could give a damn about them. They'll do what they want regardless. This issue is a matter of the individual and freedom. This is government activity that is changing the way I think and feel in a negative manner. Some people have no problem saying whatever they want, to whoever, wherever, they could get on a stage of a national event being broadcast live to the world and tell their biggest secrets. That's not me, and I feel myself and everyone else has the right to not put certain information out there if we so choose.
You're right; most of this stuff would be boring, nonsensical, who-gives-a-crap information (me talking to someone about what I ate, or telling someone what I think of communists, etc). But that's beside the point. It's not about the content; although that's the point they're using against us (it's to stop terrorist activity. So we have the right to record data of anyone/a majority of the technologically connected US citizens on the basis that there _may_ be terrorists among us? Why doesn't this work for, say, drugs? Why weren't/aren't they tapping everyone's communication to snuff out drug dealers? Or other criminals? Maybe because they need a probable cause to do it? But not with terrorism huh?)