News Items

How the DEA Uses “Parallel Construction” to Hide Unconstitutional Investigations

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Earlier this year, I highlighted the fact that unconstitutional surveillance was in many ways birthed by the pointless, misguided and utterly failed, “War on Drugs.” Here’s an excerpt from that post, titled, How NSA Surveillance Was Birthed from the Drug War – The DEA Tracked Billions of Phone Calls Pre 9/11:

The now-discontinued operation, carried out by the DEA’s intelligence arm, was the government’s first known effort to gather data on Americans in bulk, sweeping up records of telephone calls made by millions of U.S. citizens regardless of whether they were suspected of a crime. It was a model for the massive phone surveillance system the NSA launched to identify terrorists after the Sept. 11 attacks. That dragnet drew sharp criticism that the government had intruded too deeply into Americans’ privacy after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked it to the news media two years ago.

The similarities between the NSA program and the DEA operation established a decade earlier are striking – too much so to have been a coincidence, people familiar with the programs said. Former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker said, “It’s very hard to see (the DEA operation) as anything other than the precursor” to the NSA’s terrorist surveillance.

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.”

In light of this, it should surprise no one that the DEA continues to use unconstitutional, “classified” methods when targeting suspects. Since the collection of this evidence would be questioned in a courtroom, the DEA suggests using a procedure known as “parallel construction” to avoid any controversy in the public record. This is how it works.

From Muckrock:

Drug Enforcement Administration training documents released to MuckRock user C.J. Ciaramella show how the agency constructs two chains of evidence to hide surveillance programs from defense teams, prosecutors, and a public wary of domestic intelligence practices.

In training materials, the department even encourages a willful ignorance by field agents to minimize the risk of making intelligence practices public.

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Activists Fly Drone Over NSA Facility in Germany, Drop Fliers Encouraging Employees to Quit

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You probably haven’t heard of Intelexit, but you probably should. It’s an organization which describes itself as follows on its website:

Intelexit is an initiative that helps people leave the secret service and build a new life. It is civil society’s response to the lack of oversight and undemocratic practices of intelligence agencies.

In recent weeks, the organization’s members have embarked on creative protests that encourage  current intelligence employees to follow their conscience and quit. Their latest stunt, over an NSA facility in Germany, involved a drone and fliers.

Here’s some more from the Intercept:

A group of activists flew a drone over a key National Security Agency complex in Germany on Friday, dropping leaflets encouraging the intelligence workers inside to quit in protest over invasive surveillance.

The site of the drone fly-by, the Dagger Complex, is a U.S. military installation south of Frankfurt. It houses the European Cryptologic Center — a major source of signals and communications intelligence in Europe for the NSA. According to German media, its 1,100 employees monitor massive amounts of communications with tools such as XKEYSCORE, one of the programs revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

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U.S. Bombing of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital in Afghanistan Was No Accident – “It Was the Target”

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In particular, MSF (Doctors Without Borders) quickly publicized numerous facts that cast serious doubt on the original U.S. claim that the strike on the hospital was just an accident. To begin with, the organization had repeatedly advised the U.S. military of the exact GPS coordinates of the hospital. They did so most recently on September 29, just five days before the strike. Beyond that, MSF personnel at the facility “frantically” called U.S. military officials during the strike to advise them that the hospital was being hit and to plead with them to stop, but the strikes continued in a “sustained” manner for 30 more minutes.  

– From Glenn Greenwald’s article: The Radically Changing Story of the U.S. Airstrike on Afghan Hospital: From Mistake to Justification

By now, all of you will have read about the U.S. military’s recent bombing of a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. What you may not be aware of, is how much the official story has changed in the days since this inexcusable act of barbarism became public.

Doctors Without Borders has been calling the attack a “war crime,” which to the average American sounds outlandish and impossible. The justification for this claim is simple — that the airstrike wasn’t an accident at all, and that the U.S. military intentionally targeted the hospital. As the days go by, it becomes increasingly clear that this is indeed the case, and the Pentagon is now scrambling to justify the intentional targeting of a hospital.

As Glenn Greenwald reports at the Intercept:

When news first broke of the U.S. airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, the response from the U.S. military was predictable and familiar. It was all just a big, terrible mistake, its official statement suggested: an airstrike it carried out in Kunduz “may have resulted in collateral damage to a nearby medical facility.” Oops: our bad. Fog of war, errant bombs, and all that.

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California Mayor Forced to Hand Over Electronics and Passwords at Airport – Compares U.S. to Nazi Germany

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“I think the American people should be extremely concerned about their personal rights and privacy. As I was being searched at the airport, there was a Latino couple to my left, and an Asian couple to my right also being aggressively searched. I briefly had to remind myself that this was not North Korea or Nazi Germany. This is the land of the Free.

– Anthony Silva, Mayor of Stockton, California

Just in case you’re still under the infantile illusion that you reside in a free country.

From ArsTechnica:

Stockton, California Mayor Anthony R. Silva attended a recent mayor’s conference in China, but his return trip took a bit longer than usual. At the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) this week, agents with the Department of Homeland Security detained Silva and confiscated his personal cell phone among other electronics. According to comments from the mayor, that may not even be the most alarming part.

“Unfortunately, they were not willing or able to produce a search warrant or any court documents suggesting they had a legal right to take my property,” Silva told SFGate. “In addition, they were persistent about requiring my passwords for all devices.”

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Welcome to the Banana Republic – Highlighting the Comment Section of Bernanke’s WSJ Propaganda Piece

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There’s nothing like the comment section when it comes to Federal Reserve propaganda in the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will remember the last time the WSJ published a disconnected piece of Central Bank stroking garbage from Fed propagandist John Hilsenrath, and the riotous anger which ensued in the comment section. If you missed it, I strongly suggest taking a read: “Revolution is Coming” – The Top 20 Responses to Jon Hilsenrath’s Idiotic WSJ Article.

Fast forward a few months, and here we have Ben “the courage to bail out billionaires” Bernanke writing an almost unreadable piece of propaganda in the WSJ titled “How the Fed Saved the Economy.”

At this point in a post I’d typically highlight the more egregious parts of an Op-Ed, but this one is so bad, so poorly written and completely uninteresting, there’s really no point. If you feel like wasting two minutes of your life go ahead and read it yourself, but it appears to me that it was put together in a couple of seconds by an intern instructed to boost book sales.

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It’s Official – UK Admits “Human Rights” No Longer a Priority of British Foreign Policy

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Not that they ever were, but they’ve finally decided to be explicit about it. Which to be honest, is pretty scary.

From the Independent:

Human rights are no longer a “top priority” for the Government, Britain’s most senior Foreign Office official has admitted, as ministers put resources into supporting trade deals ahead of tackling injustice in other parts of the world. In a remarkably frank admission to MPs, Sir Simon McDonald, Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office, said that human rights no longer had the “profile” within his department that they had “in the past”.

Yes, you read that right. Trade deals. You know like…

Forget the TPP – Wikileaks Releases Documents from the Equally Shady “Trade in Services Agreement,” or TISA

And he added that the Conservatives’ “prosperity agenda” was now “further up the list” of areas on which the department was concentrating its dwindling resources.

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How America’s “Think Tanks” are Compromised and Bought Off by Foreign Governments

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The think tanks do not disclose the terms of the agreements they have reached with foreign governments. And they have not registered with the United States government as representatives of the donor countries, an omission that appears, in some cases, to be a violation of federal law, according to several legal specialists who examined the agreements at the request of The Times.

As a result, policy makers who rely on think tanks are often unaware of the role of foreign governments in funding the research.

Several legal experts who reviewed the documents, however, said the tightening relationships between United States think tanks and their overseas sponsors could violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act, the 1938 federal law that sought to combat a Nazi propaganda campaign in the United States. The law requires groups that are paid by foreign governments with the intention of influencing public policy to register as “foreign agents” with the Justice Department.

At least one of the research groups conceded that it may in fact be violating the federal law.

– From the New York Times article: Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks

Liberty Blitzkrieg readers will be under no illusions when it comes to the role “Think Tanks” play within America’s crony, unethical, slimy and entirely compromised political system. Nevertheless, today’s New York Times article exposing how foreign government, likely illegally, use them to buy influence in Washington D.C., is extremely important and disturbing. Let’s examine a few excerpts.

From the New York Times:

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Parents Beware – The FBI is Launching Program to Recruit High School Kids

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The following story reported by the Financial Times, is one of the most disturbing I’ve seen in a very long time. Here’s an excerpt from the article, titled: FBI Scouts for Younger Class of Cyber Sleuths

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking to enlist teenagers in its fight against cyber crime before they are lured into high-paying private sector jobs or fail background checks by smoking marijuana. 

A first of its kind pilot program to be launched next autumn by the FBI will offer computer security classes to select high school students near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for university credit.

Personally, I see this as the statist equivalent of pedophilia. There’s so much about adults preying on young kids for sex that offends us, but at its core is the question of an unbalanced power relationship. We all know that teenagers are confused, impressionable and easily manipulated. What is so offensive about sexual predators is they are taking advantage of this vulnerable emotional state to gratify themselves. It’s almost always an unfair dynamic.

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U.S. Politicians are Asked About Saudi Atrocities…Here’s What Happened Next

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Former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney smiled and repeatedly said, “Nice to see you,” when I asked if he had any concerns about the Saudi Arabian-led bombing campaign in Yemen.

– From the Intercept article: U.S. Senators Hem and Haw on Saudi Arabia’s Human Rights Abuses

Just in case you’re still confused as to why the Middle East is a flaming cauldron of death, destruction and chaos, Lee Fang provides you with some insightful observations from the self-proclaimed “leaders of the free world.”

From the Intercept:

Given the news this week that Saudi-led forces bombed a wedding party in Yemen, killing scores of civilians, as well as the decision by the Saudi government to behead and then crucify Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, the teenage son of a government critic, I attempted to talk about the Saudi Arabian human rights record to a number of politicians at the Washington Ideas Forum, an event hosted by The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute to discuss “this year’s most pressing issues and ideas of consequence.”

Most were uninterested in commenting.

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Saudi Arabia Forces the UN to Drop Humanitarian Inquiry Into Yemen Atrocities

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The following would be funny, if it weren’t so incredibly sad. The United Nations’ spiral into clownish insignificance continues unabated.

From the New York Times:

GENEVA — In a U-turn at the United Nations Human Rights Council, Western governments dropped plans Wednesday for an international inquiry into human rights violations by all parties in the war in Yemen that has killed thousands of civilians in the last six months.

The change of direction came as the Netherlands withdrew the draft of a resolution it had prepared with support from a group of mainly Western countries that instructed the United Nations high commissioner for human rights to send experts to Yemen to investigate the conduct of the war.

That proposal was a follow-up to recommendations by the commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, who detailed in a report this month the heavy civilian loss of life inflicted not only by the relentless airstrikes of the military coalition led by Saudi Arabia but also by the indiscriminate shelling carried out by Houthi rebels.

But in the face of stiff resistance from Saudi Arabia and its coalition partners, and to the dismay of human rights groups, Western governments have accepted a resolution based on a Saudi text that lacks any reference to an independent, international inquiry.

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