When Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was secretly recording massive amounts of data from US citizens, including copies of phone call metadata and online activities, a lot of folks shrugged. "What's the big deal? It helps catch terrorists, right? And what's the worst that can happen, a little embarrassment, right?"
Then it got worse. More documents revealed that the NSA was intercepting enormous amounts of online data, including nearly every email, blog post, online instant messenger session, and more from nearly all Americans.
And some people still shrugged. What's the worst that can happen about that, right?
Well, it has gotten worse.
In new documents just revealed, it
turns out that the NSA has been feeding information that it uncovers from this massive surveillance to the Drug Enforcement Agency.
There are just two catch: Federal law forbids the NSA from spying on Americans, and the law says that information that is uncovered without a warrant or probable cause can't be used in court.
So the Federal agents are trained to "re-create probable cause." That is, they turn information over to the DEA, who turns it over to law enforcement, and then if an arrest is made, they make up a phony chain of events to conceal the NSA involvement and to manufacture fake probable cause where none existed.
In one example a DEA agent talked about, the NSA told the DEA to tell local law enforcement to look for a certain truck at a certain time. Local law enforcement was then instructed to make up a reason to pull the truck over and search it. When the search turned up contraband, the traffic stop was used as the probable cause; the judge, the prosecutor, and the defense attorney were not told about the NSA involvement (since that would make the evidence inadmissible in court) and were not told that local police were instructed to make up a reason for the traffic stop.
I'm sure some folks will probably still say that's OK. Federal laws are being broken and the guarantees in the Constitution are being overridden, judges and prosecutors are being misled, and the chain of events in criminal court cases is being fabricated--but it's okay because it's all to catch bad guys, right?
