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posted by takyon on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:20AM   Printer-friendly
from the drug-war-still-a-thing dept.

Reuters is reporting on a lawsuit filed against the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) by Human Rights Watch. The lawsuit, filed on April 7, 2015, seeks to have the DEA's bulk collection program [autoplay video, exclusive report by USA TODAY] declared unlawful.

From the Reuters article:

Opening another front in the legal challenges to U.S. government surveillance, a human rights group has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration for collecting bulk records of Americans' telephone calls to some foreign countries.

Lawyers for Human Rights Watch filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit asks a judge to declare unlawful the DEA program, which ended in September 2013 after about 15 years, and to bar the DEA from collecting call records in bulk again.

U.S. spying programs have come under court scrutiny since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of them in 2013.

Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said on Wednesday the DEA program is not active.

"All of the information has been deleted," he said in an email to Reuters. "The agency is no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers."

The DEA's Special Operations Division collected data in bulk about international calls from the United States to certain countries determined by the government to have a nexus to drug trafficking.

The data included phone numbers and the date, time and duration of each call, but not the content, according to the DEA.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by rondon on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:57AM

    by rondon (5167) on Thursday April 09 2015, @11:57AM (#168281)

    Why would we believe a word this Patrick Rodenbush says? Government officials have perjured themselves before congress and the courts with no ramifications.

    Cry wolf one time, for real for me Patrick. I will enjoy watching you be eaten.

    • (Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Thursday April 09 2015, @12:05PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday April 09 2015, @12:05PM (#168284) Journal

      It should be noted that Human Rights Watch isn't just suing over the illegality of the program, it also wants to confirm that records have been deleted:

      Although the DEA has indicated the program was “suspended” in 2013, this suit seeks to ensure the program is permanently terminated, that it cannot restart, and that all of Human Rights Watch’s illegally collected records have been purged from all government systems.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by davester666 on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:29PM

        by davester666 (155) on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:29PM (#168436)

        Sure. no problem. not like any other agency has the budget to have a copy of the entire database.

        Our department has stopped doing this and have delete the data under our control is not the same as nobody in the US gov't is doing this and the data no longer exits.

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:52PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:52PM (#168445)

      And isn't this a bit like saying that "But your Honor, I'm not murdering anybody at this very instant in time am I..."

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by MrGuy on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:24PM

    by MrGuy (1007) on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:24PM (#168341)

    The government's approach on similar cases has been to move to dismiss for lack of standing.

    In surveillance cases, they claim the defendant can't prove they're being surveilled, and that they can't say who IS being surveilled because it's secret.

    In a case like this, they'll likely argue that HRW (as an organization) has no direct standing to challenge a program that recorded individuals. If they trot out individuals, they'll likely object that there is no evidence those individuals were ever recorded by the program, since (as they've already claimed) the program records are deleted.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:34PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:34PM (#168374)

      Which makes it nearly impossible to defend the constitution. Standing is just nonsense in these cases; when the government violates the constitution, that harms us all, so everyone has standing.

    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:45PM

      by Thexalon (636) on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:45PM (#168398)

      The "Standing" argument can be used for things even more egregious than this: When Barack Obama put out an order to have Anwar al-Awlaki summarily executed without trial (or what us civilians call "murdered"), al-Awlaki's father sued to try to stop him, citing the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The court threw out the case on the grounds that Nasser al-Awlaki did not have standing to question the order, despite the fact that if Anwar al-Awlaki had tried to return to the US to file suit he would have been killed immediately.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 09 2015, @05:55PM

      by DeathMonkey (1380) on Thursday April 09 2015, @05:55PM (#168423) Journal

      The government's approach on similar cases has been to move to dismiss for lack of standing.
       
      The DEA isn't an intelligence agency. Presumably they were using this evidence in cases that went on the public record.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:29PM

        by MrGuy (1007) on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:29PM (#168437)

        Doesn't seem likely to me. You're expect that the government willingly entered evidence obtained through dragnet warrantless mass surveillance at a public trial? I don't see any evidence of a FISA or other judicial sanction for this program. Aside from any remotely competent lawyer having an easy time getting admittedly illegally collected evidence thrown out, why would the government risk exposure of such a program by publicly admitting it exists?

        My guess is that, to the extent this was used at all, it was presented purely in summary as "information from a confidential source" in warrant applications to GET wiretap warrants for the actual targets. Or maybe they just to know who to follow around until they found activity sufficiently suspicious to apply for a warrant on other grounds.

        Regardless, I don't know how this gets around the standing issue. Unless HRW was targeted as an organization, it's not clear they have standing to object to individuals being surveilled. At best, IF the government openly presented evidence of this program on the record at trial, you've identified a small number of individuals (the ones targeted in those cases) who MIGHT have standing to object to the program. And even there, if they had a trial and were competently represented by council, if they didn't object to the basis of this evidence at trial, it's not completely clear that they're entitled to re-litigate that issue after the trial is over.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Thursday April 09 2015, @08:16PM

        by tathra (3367) on Thursday April 09 2015, @08:16PM (#168475)

        the DEA is the primary recipient of the NSA dragnet. [washingtonpost.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:27PM (#168434)

      > they'll likely argue that HRW (as an organization) has no direct standing to challenge a program that recorded individuals.

      It was a bulk recording system, they are going to argue that those individuals were recorded while doing the work of the organization.

  • (Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:24PM

    by AnonTechie (2275) on Thursday April 09 2015, @02:24PM (#168342) Journal

    Would the DEA provide any info about how the collected data was used and how many drug related crimes were prevented (if any) ?

    --
    Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:09PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 09 2015, @04:09PM (#168386)

      The drug war should vanish anyway, so who cares how many drug-related crimes were prevented?

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Sir Finkus on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:43PM

    by Sir Finkus (192) on Thursday April 09 2015, @03:43PM (#168377) Journal

    "All of the information has been deleted," he said in an email to Reuters. "The agency is no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers."

    Because I haven't heard that one before.