A User Data Control and Freedom Manifesto

In a post entitled Security in a Post-PRISM World in eWeek today
by Sean Michael Kerner there’s an interesting Manifesto by Frank Karlitschek:

User Data Manifesto

Going a step further, Karlitschek has proposed what he is calling the “User Data Manifesto,” which outlines the characteristics that should apply to user data. “If I take a photo, it should be my photo,” Karlitschek said. The full User Data Manifesto includes eight key points:
1. Own the data
The data that someone directly or indirectly creates belongs to the person who created it.
2.Know where the data is stored
Everybody should be able to know where their personal data is physically stored, for how long, on which server, in what country and what laws apply.
3. Choose the storage location
Everybody should always be able to migrate their personal data to a different provider, server or their own machine at any time without being locked in to a specific vendor.
4. Control access
Everybody should be able to know, choose and control who has access to their own data to see or modify it.
5. Choose the conditions
If someone chooses to share their own data, then the owner of the data selects the sharing license and conditions.
6. Invulnerability of data
Everybody should be able to protect their own data against surveillance and to federate their own data for backups to prevent data loss or for any other reason.
7. Use it optimally
Everybody should be able to access and use their own data at all times with any device they choose and in the most convenient and easiest way for them.
8. Server software transparency
Server software should be free and open-source software so that the source code of the software can be inspected to confirm that it works as specified.

The Comment I Tried to Post on eWeek

Good stuff! I heartily support the Manifesto.

The NSA’s recent crackdown on itself makes it clear that it has no intention of scaling back its operations. It also clearly will continue to ignore and even flout its overseers and regulators. Thus, the FISA court is irrelevant and just a distraction.

President Obama has offered to make us “feel more comfortable” about the NSA’s total surveillance state. Another NOOP.

For those of use who would like to regain things like Democracy, Capitalism, and Justice (as in the system that allows for a defense)… and we must realize that these things can no longer exist thanks to the NSA… the only thing that will bring change is what most Americans loathe: taking action.

The Government is big, and it may appear resistance is futile, but there are those who have resisted, and they live. We outnumber those trying to saddle us with this total surveillance state. Take heart. Have no fear. Resist. Take action.

– Rex (w/ tip o’ the hat to “We Are Hugh”)

NSA: Mentally Diseased Agency

The NSA’s response to the Snowden disclosures show that it doesn’t get it, and probably won’t be getting it any time soon. This is bad news for Democracy, Capitalism, Freedom, and the American People.

By cracking down on staffers and taking draconian measures to reduce the possibility of future disclosures, the NSA is demonstrating that it has no intention of changing its ways, and wants to ratchet up its activities, if anything.

If the U.S. Federal government were an individual, and to be psychologically evaluated, there is no doubt what the conclusion would be: sociopathic paranoia and schitzophrenia. In short, mentally ill.

There, I said it. But I’m not alone. The Guardian is saying it too, and more eloquently than my low-budget allows for. In case you’ve missed it:

We have learned that in pursuit of its bureaucratic mission to obtain signals intelligence in a pervasively networked world, the NSA has mounted a systematic campaign against the foundations of American power: constitutional checks and balances, technological leadership, and market entrepreneurship. The NSA scandal is no longer about privacy, or a particular violation of constitutional or legislative obligations. The American body politic is suffering a severe case of auto-immune disease: our defense system is attacking other critical systems of our body.

 

First, the lying. The National Intelligence University, based in Washington, DC, offers a certificate program called the denial and deception advanced studies program. That’s not a farcical sci-fi dystopia; it’s a real program about countering denial and deception by other countries. The repeated misrepresentations suggest that the intelligence establishment has come to see its civilian bosses as adversaries to be managed through denial and deception.

 

– The Guardian

For more, see: Time to tame the NSA behemoth trampling our rights

Lamestream NSA Coverup?

Sometimes the Lamestream Media seem overly complicit with political leadership. It’s not their job, so they should really stop it! The power, money, fame, just aren’t worth it. Hey, are you still reading?

Lately there have been lame analyses of the situation with the NSA in the wake of the Snowden disclosures. Fussing about the FISA court, to be particular.

If there’s one thing we’ve learned in the past few months, it’s that the NSA, by their own admission blatantly ignores the direction of the FISA court. The NSA is rampantly out-of-control, operating in a no-man’s land of their own creation that is lawless and without bounds (other than funding, of course, which doesn’t seem to be much of a limitation at present).

So it is that you don’t have to stay too far on top of this story for it to be obvious that the Lamestream is either totally incompetent or complicit. Which is it? What are we to believe under the circumstances.

In today’s New York Times blog Public Editor’s Journal, in a piece entitled “Guardian Story on Israel and N.S.A. Is Not ‘Surprising’ Enough to Cover“, Margaret Sullivan mentions that it was “good to see The Times getting more fully involved” [in the stories related to the Snowden NSA disclosures]. See also Decision to Publish Against Government Request Was ‘Not a Particularly Anguished One’.

In today’s piece, Sullivan relates how she exchanged email with Managing Editor, Dean Baquet asking why the times wasn’t covering the story about NSA’s connection with Israel. Baquet responded, she says, “I didn’t think it was a significant or surprising story”, and “I think the more energy we put into chasing the small ones, the less time we have to break our own. Not to mention cover the turmoil in Syria.”

Ms. Sullivan then asked her editor “… was this essentially a question of reporting resources?” to which Baquet responded “I’d say resources and news judgment”.

That news judgment practically puts Baquet in bed with the NSA, particularly considering the interest of Times readership in matters involving Israel.

But I digress by citing an example. The point here is that the NSA has, by its’ own admission, and as documented by itself in the Snowden disclosures, made clear that they seem themselves as above the law. They have no intention of abiding by the dictates of the FISA court, the Congress, Senate, or White House. In addition, the NSA clearly has gone to some length to spread disinformation about what they’re doing, as well as the scope of what they do.

With so much disinformation and false information swirling around, it would seem prudent to stick to what’s in the NSA’s own documentation, disclosed by Snowden. We can safely assume that, as with any large organization, those documents have been watered down and sanitized, and the truth is probably far worse than even the leaked documents suggest.

NSA: Invasiveness of Domestic Spying is Total; Absolute


http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-09-06~How_Deeply_NSA_Gets_Up_Your_Stuff.mp3

This is the DayPage I broadcast this morning on Radio InfoWeb

Just How Far the NSA Gets Into Your Stuff

DayPage 09/06/2013

DayPage – I’m Rex Latchford… more leakage from the NSA’s exiled contractor Edward Snowden. Published in the NY Times and the Guardian. The extent to which the Government has broken encryption methods used routinely on the Internet, and devised how to do so in real time has been known for some time by many, but as with previous revelations, the NSA’s own documents are more convincing to skeptics and provide some previously only suspected detail.

The entire list of how the details of NSA’s cryptanalysis for snooping Internet and other electronic data has been published by The Guardian’s website, theguardian.com, as images of documents marked “Top Secret”.

The Guardian writes:

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments. The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – “the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet”.

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with “brute force”, and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves. Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial encryption software.

Suggesting how to deal with this new information, and the new world of Total Global Surveillance in which we find ourselves, the Guardian writes:

The primary way the NSA eavesdrops on internet communications is in the network. That’s where their capabilities best scale. They have invested in enormous programs to automatically collect and analyze network traffic. Anything that requires them to attack individual endpoint computers is significantly more costly and risky for them, and they will do those things carefully and sparingly.
Leveraging its secret agreements with telecommunications companies – all the US and UK ones, and many other “partners” around the world – the NSA gets access to the communications trunks that move internet traffic. In cases where it doesn’t have that sort of friendly access, it does its best to surreptitiously monitor communications channels: tapping undersea cables, intercepting satellite communications, and so on.

That’s an enormous amount of data, and the NSA has equivalently enormous capabilities to quickly sift through it all, looking for interesting traffic. “Interesting” can be defined in many ways: by the source, the destination, the content, the individuals involved, and so on. This data is funneled into the vast NSA system for future analysis. The NSA collects much more metadata about internet traffic: who is talking to whom, when, how much, and by what mode of communication. Metadata is a lot easier to store and analyze than content. It can be extremely personal to the individual, and is enormously valuable intelligence.

The NSA also devotes considerable resources to attacking endpoint computers. This kind of thing is done by its TAO – Tailored Access Operations – group. TAO has a menu of exploits it can serve up against your computer – whether you’re running Windows, Mac OS, Linux, iOS, or something else – and a variety of tricks to get them on to your computer. Your anti-virus software won’t detect them, and you’d have trouble finding them even if you knew where to look. These are hacker tools designed by hackers with an essentially unlimited budget. What I took away from reading the Snowden documents was that if the NSA wants in to your computer, it’s in. Period.

That’s it for today’s DayPage, and there will be more in future DayPages. All monitored, of course, by the NSA. Daypage is produced by Peter Patriot. The Producer is Minka Bito. It’s a production of radio infoweb. [REDACTED] …even though nothing is safe. We’ll see you on the next DayPage…

How NSA Has Harmed the US Economy

Reports from various sources on the Internet indicate that Snowden documents show the U.S. was spying on China using a server located in China, and possibly via “back doors” in U.S. manufactured telcom equipment purchased by the Chinese for their own use.

China’s response is to rid itself of U.S. telcom providers and U.S. manufactured telecom equipment as quickly as possible, replacing it with either Chinese-built equipment, or, if that’s not possible, equipment built in Europe. The big loser? U.S. telcom equipment providers and the U.S. economy.

Estimates are circulating that the cost of NSA snooping to U.S.-based cloud computing companies could be $21.5 to $35 billion in worldwide contracts over the next three years. Non-U.S. companies are executing a cut-and-run strategy, scared away by the knowledge that the NSA has in place total surveillance of U.S. based servers and telecom infrastructure.

An ITIF (Information Technology & Innovation Foundation) report says 36 percent of U.S. residents surveyed said the NSA leaks have made it more difficult for them to “do business outside the United States”. The report found that Europeans are trying to edge out their American competitors, and are enlisting their governments in this effort. Even before the recent spying revelations, governments in France and Germany were advocating national cloud efforts to counteract concerns that the U.S. Patriot Act could compromise the security of data stored by U.S. companies. France’s second largest carrier, NFR, rounded up $300 million to invest in a French competitor to Amazon. A German minister’s call for a boycott of U.S. cloud companies has been reported.

The only hope for U.S. based companies may be the information coming out about other countries spying habits. If total surveillance is seen as a problem afflicting most governments, competition might be less affected.

Here are some related reports from across the web:

Desperation: Syrian War Distraction, Stoning for Submission


http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-09-03~Bombing_for_Compliance_-_Stoning_for_Submission_-_Fork_in_the_Road.mp3

In a DayPage I recorded this morning for Radio InfoWeb, I talk about the desperate disinformation campaign the Obama Administration has engaged itself in.

Can the U.S. stand alone against the rest of civilization and demand acceptance of American total global surveillance? Too much primo weed at the White House?

The U.S. is apparently at its’ wits end over its inability to control the narrative. Unable to control the drip-drip-drip leaking of NSA details — most recently about the NSA’s burgeoning budget, making it the most funded intelligence organization in the US, — and also the countless millions the NSA has paid to the nations telecommunications firms to purchase domestic telecommunications data — such as voice phone call content, web surfing habits, emails, text messages, photos, instant messages and more — all in an end-run around basic U.S. rights such as the prohibition on search and seizure, and the right to be “left alone” by the government … for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The biggest story is the story still being skirted by the government and lamestream media. It’s that Democracy, Capitalism, Free Markets, Due Process, and other foundational concepts that make up the world we have come to take for granted cannot function in a world of total, global surveillance in which we suddenly find ourselves. How will the world respond? Will we meekly lay down and accept totalitarian government, complete with big-brother and war disinformation straight out of Orwell’s 1984 playbook, or will we insist on continuing the direction of civilization, hopefully to a more peaceful and prosperous world not just for the elite, but for everyone?

Lamestream Drops NSA Snoopergate Story

Not surprisingly, the lamestream media have begun the burial process for the NSA Snooper-gate Story. One likely reason is that the administration has dug its heels in and steadfastly refused the possibility that bulk domestic spying might ever end. Ultimately, the lamestream media are brown-nosers, and without a path for the story that resolves in favor of the Government’s omnipotence, they see no other alternative than burial.

Europe, on the other hand, is not so keen to just roll over and accept that they’re being relentlessly spied on by the U.S. government. Here’s today’s DayPage, which I host over on Radio InfoWeb every morning. It features a look at today’s German paper, Der Spiegel


http://daypage.net/ar/DayPage~2013-08-27~NSA_Story_Lives_On_In_Europe.mp3

 

Now, to be fair, the Washington Post had an article on today’s edition, page A3, regarding Edward Snowden visiting the Russian Embassy in Hong Kong prior to his departure for Russia to evade the full anger and rage of the U.S. A search of the online edition of today’s New York Times, however, received no hits.

Outside the lamestream media, today’s Democracy Now! was chock-full of snooper-gate related news:

  • NSA Spied on UN

The United Nations has confirmed plans to ask the Obama administration about reports of U.S. spying on top U.N. officials. Citing leaks from Edward Snowden, the German magazine Der Spiegel has revealed the National Security Agency decoded the United Nations’ internal video conferencing system to eavesdrop last year. The spying on U.N. communications would violate the United Nations’ 1961 Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

  • NSA/Intelligence Disinformation to Discredit Critics

Snowden denies a leak credited to him by Britain’s Independent. The Independent of London reported on Friday that the British government is running “a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence.” The article cites documents leaked by Snowden. But in a statement, Snowden denied leaking that information or working with The Independent. In a statement, Snowden said the British government may have deliberately leaked that information itself in a bid to convince the public that the National Security Agency leaks have been harmful. The article appears just as the British government faces widespread criticism for its detention of David Miranda, the partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, under an anti-terrorism law last week. Snowden said: “It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that The Guardian and Washington Post’s disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others.”

  • NSA: Willful Violations and Illegal Distribution of Snoop Data

The National Security Agency has acknowledged new abuses of its surveillance powers. In a statement, the NSA said it had uncovered “very rare instances of willful violations of NSA’s authorities” by agency operatives. Some NSA officials were found to have spied on love interests, with one monitoring a former spouse. According to the Wall Street Journal, the practice is “common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.”

The National Security Agency has also been found to be providing illegally collected information about U.S. citizens to the Drug Enforcement Agency and Internal Revenue Service in order to assist in prosecutions. Such information would be inadmissible in court. Because it is illegal and violates due process, the results would be devastating to those accused.

On a related note: when the going get’s rough, the U.S. historically starts a war. Syria, perhaps? The lamestream media have been keeping up the drumbeat of war for several days now. But it’s a new day, and there is some question as to whether a war can completely bury the snooper-gate story.


 

US In Plea Deal with The People

The U.S. Government has taken to competing with Snowden documents to try to stop the hemorrhaging of truth about the extent of NSA data collecting. In recent days we have seen a declassified court document declaring that the NSA committed a relatively minor “oops” of collecting some “tens of thousands” of domestic emails.

The National Security Agency illegally collected tens of thousands of domestic emails before being stopped in 2011. The disclosure was made Wednesday in a newly declassified order from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees NSA spying. The FISC ordered the NSA to change its procedures after the agency admitted to wrongly collecting up to 56,000 emails a year over a three-year period. The NSA says the illegal email collection resulted from technical error, not deliberate snooping. — Democracy Now! [8/22/2013]

Make no mistake, this is a psyops/disinformation campaign. It’s as if they’re going into the Court of Public Opinion to cut a plea deal:

Instead of going to trial for total bulk collection of data, the Government would plead guilty for the inappropriate collection of a few thousand emails in return for getting a lighter sentence, and the possibility that they might continue their criminal enterprise of total data collection.

  • The People would agree to forget about the illegal massive bulk collection, the corrupt cloak of secrecy, and go back to business as usual, even going so far as to feel comfortable with it, as President Obama has insisted.
  • The Government would feel free to do whatever it wants, including limitless expansion of data collection, and trampling of basic freedoms.
  • We would no longer have a democracy. Democracy would no longer be possible anywhere on the planet, but we could pretend, moving forward.
  • The Government is banking on the hope that The People will share and keep up the pretense that “These aren’t the ‘droids we’re looking for, move along” and that things will just go back to the way they were (which they never do).

It’s a bold move, but I really do question if the American public is that stupid. The public is a big ship to turn around, but it’s already well into the maneuver, and stopping it will not be easy for the Government. It will take more than a little grease and bullsh*t. One of the things that has slowed the public awakening to the violations that have been committed against it has been grasping the practical implication of bulk data collection on day-to-day life. The same has been true for the lamestream media. However, journalists and talking heads at the edge of the lamestream media, such as Tor creator Jacob Applebaum on August 20th’s Democracy Now!, have pointed out in unambiguous language that democracies and free markets cannot exist in a global surveillance state and provided clear examples of why they can’t.

“I think, at its core, what is at stake is the ability for a human being to have dignity and for journalists to have integrity with their sources. And from that, I believe that it threatens the whole concept of a free democracy. This is, I think, in a sense, being shown in the last 48 hours to the extreme. And I don’t mean that as hyperbole. But if everything is under surveillance, how is it that you can have a democracy? How is it that you can organize a political function or have confidentiality with a constituent or with a source, or with a friend or with a lover? That’s fundamentally an erasure of fundamental things that we have had for quite some time.

And planetary surveillance has very serious concerns, not the least of which is economic espionage, and not the least of which, I think, for me, personally, is about journalistic source protection. I mean, how is it that we will be able to protect our sources if there’s no way to securely meet, no way to communicate about having a meeting, no way to actually communicate about basic facts? There’s no such thing as on or off the record, when in fact you don’t control the record. And it’s not merely a matter of whether or not we have something to hide, because it is not us that will decide whether we have something to hide. It is an analyst somewhere. It is a machine learning algorithm somewhere.

And this is the thing that is perhaps the most terrifying: Because people are flagged, then other people are dispatched. Each person plays their role, and more and more a machine plays that role, a machine that does not understand constitutional protections, does not understand the Magna Carta or the Bill of Rights, does not understand humanity. It’s a machine. And the humans, they behave like machines, too, which is a great fear, that humans will start to behave like machines. And so, what is at stake is in fact democracy, where we still have it, and the free press. ” — Jacob Applebaum 8/20/2013

And so, for those who feel powerless to act in their democratic society (and yet, isn’t that the purpose of a democratic society?), one often hears the lament alluded to by Jacob Appelbaum, above:

“well, shucks, I have nothing to hide. I’m not important. I try to straitjacket myself with the Orwellian rules imposed on me at all times, and comply with commands given by designated authorities immediately and without question.”

The hurdle until recently has been to get the masses beyond that point. Luckily, Edward Snowden came along with a sufficient amount of information in addition to Bradley Manning’s (and many others) to reach the tipping point. The heavy hand of the government since has shattered the illusion of The Emperor’s New Clothes, and just as in the parable, small children are speaking up and shredding the pretense of the Government shared with older people who don’t wish to bothered or inconvenienced by reality. As with Humpty Dumpty, all the King’s horses, and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again. Once an illusion is shattered, one can’t go back into the illusion. Not fully.

 

NSA Snooping Forces Business Closures

(updated 8/9 7pm EDT)

The Fable of The NSA and the Internet

Long ago and far away on the planet Earth, the people of the planet enjoyed the fruits of a global telecommunications network. But the Governments, which did not trust the people, secretly decided to collect all its information and use it to rule the people. When the people found out, they stopped using the Internet because they didn’t want the Governments intrusions and manipulations in every aspect of their lives. The planet fell silent, technological advancement was halted, and economic hardship gripped it’s people.
The End

The Fable of the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs

Just as the lame-stream media has become dimly aware that all the snooping has real consequences in the real word… news is breaking of how some businesses are being forced to close as a result of the extent of NSA information gathering. There is likely to be a wave of such consequences, as the Federal Government may eventually discover they have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs: the Internet.

Real World Impacts:
Two Business Shutting Down Due to NSA Domestic Surveillance

Lavabit Out Of Business – Gagged and Bound by U.S. Govt

Texas-based Lavabit service has shut down but said that legal reasons are preventing it from explaining why. Lavabit appears to have been in a legal battle to stop U.S. agencies from obtaining customer details.

Silent Circle, a secure communications firm, has shut its email service because messages cannot be kept wholly secret, which was the basis of its appeal to customers.

Edward Snowden is rumored to have been using Lavabit while holed up in the Moscow airport.

Ladar Levison, Owner and Operator of Lavabit LLC wrote in an open letter that has replaced the company’s website at lavabit.com:

“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on–the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.

What’s going to happen now? We’ve already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

Following that is a link requesting donations to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund via PayPal [PayPal was stopped by the U.S. Government from transferring donation funds to WikiLeaks in the U.S.’s quest to destroy WikiLeaks].

Silent Circle Shuts Down Secure Mail Service:
NSA Surveillance Makes Email Security Impossible

Silent Circle, a firm offering a variety of telecommunications products, states on its’ website: “Silent Circle has preemptively discontinued Silent Mail service to prevent spying.”

The announcement continues:

“We designed our phone, video, and text services (Silent Phone, Text and Eyes) to be completely end-to-end secure with all cryptography done on the clients and our exposure to your data to be nil. The reasons are obvious — the less of your information we have, the better it is for you and for us.

Silent Mail has thus always been something of a quandary for us. Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has. There are far too many leaks of information and metadata intrinsically in the email protocols themselves. Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure.

And yet, many people wanted it. Silent Mail has similar security guarantees to other secure email systems, and with full disclosure, we thought it would be valuable.

However, we have reconsidered this position. We’ve been thinking about this for some time, whether it was a good idea at all. Yesterday, another secure email provider, Lavabit, shut down their system less they “be complicit in crimes against the American people.” We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now.”

The company plans to continue on with its’ non-email products.

“By injecting the N.S.A. into virtually every cross-border interaction, the U.S. government will forever alter what has always been an open exchange of ideas,” said Jameel Jaffer, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

By injecting itself into every electronic communication, the U.S. Government has forever altered the way we think about and use the forms of communication we have used and become dependent on for over a generation. With the Internet the main driver of economic growth, the U.S., in its greed to collect every shred of information on the ‘net, may have killed the goose that laid the golden eggs.

See also: The Dog and the Bone – a fable wherein by greeding for all, one risks losing all.

 

 

DEA Illegally Using NSA Domestic Intel on Americans

Here’s more from Glenn Greenwald, the journalist at The Guardian who broke the Snowden documents, on how a secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) unit is covering up its use of intelligence intercepts, wiretaps to help launch criminal investigations of Americans. “It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained,” Greenwald says.

The following video clip is from Democracy Now! heard weekdays at 2PM NY time on Radio InfoWeb and hundreds of media outlets worldwide.

Full transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn, I also wanted to ask you about a new story you just tweeted about that was published today by Reuters. The article begins, “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 unit of the DEA that distributes the information is called the Special Operations Division, or SOD.”

Glenn Greenwald, can you talk more about this?

GLENN GREENWALD: So this should be a huge scandal for the following reason. The essence of the Constitution is that the government cannot obtain evidence or information about you unless it has probable cause to believe that you’ve engaged in a crime and then goes to a court and gets a warrant. And only then is that evidence usable in a prosecution against you. What this secret agency is doing, according to Reuters, it is circumventing that process by gathering all kinds of information without any court supervision, without any oversight at all, using surveillance technologies and other forms of domestic spying. And then, when it gets this information that it believes it can be used in a criminal prosecution, it knows that that information can’t be used in a criminal prosecution because it’s been acquired outside of the legal and constitutional process, so they cover up how they really got it, and they pretend—they make it seem as though they really got it through legal and normal means, by then going back and retracing the investigation, once they already have it, and re-acquiring it so that it looks to defense counsel and even to judges and prosecutors like it really was done in the constitutionally permissible way. So they’re prosecuting people and putting people in prison for using evidence that they’ve acquired illegally, which they’re then covering up and lying about and deceiving courts into believing was actually acquired constitutionally. It’s a full-frontal assault on the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Amendments and on the integrity of the judicial process, because they’re deceiving everyone involved in criminal prosecutions about how this information has been obtained.