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Fiona Tang writes in ACLU FOIA Seeks Information About How Government Launders Evidence:
Today the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking records related to "parallel construction," the government's practice of falsifying a trail of evidence in order to conceal controversial investigative techniques from the courts and the public.
Under parallel construction, instead of disclosing how its investigation actually took place, the government presents a sanitized version of events. The practice allows the government to evade legal challenges to the use of such techniques, and also to keep the very existence of such techniques a secret. Recent news reports have shown that parallel construction might be far more common than we'd like to think, so we've asked the government to provide any records it has documenting the practice.
... parallel construction has been used to cover up some of the most notorious surveillance techniques in the past decade. It initially captured the public's attention in August 2013, when Reuters published an article scrutinizing the elusive Drug Enforcement Administration Special Operations Division's use of the practice. Parallel construction received renewed attention this past May, when a non-disclosure agreement between the FBI and the Oklahoma City Police Department was released through a state records request. The non-disclosure agreement governs the use of cell site simulators—colloquially known as "stingrays"—and requires that the Oklahoma City Police Department use the technology for "lead purposes only," further explaining that the agency must "use additional and independent investigative means and methods . . . that would be admissible at trial" in lieu of disclosing to the defendant the fact that a stingray device was used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19 2016, @09:32PM
Their request is ridiculously broad. It isn't asking for records related to a certain case or instance or something, they're asking for all records with certain phrases in them, or all records where the document give certain instructions. There's no way to satisfy that in a reasonable manner. Ask yourself how do you do this? For any organization larger than a handful of people all working exclusively off of one shared drive, this is a crazy request. Take the Government out of it for a moment; let's say you make the same request of a university. How do you search through all the individual PCs of all the colleges and departments? You can't just kick off some grep commands and walk away. How do you read all the files on everyone's computers ("including legal and policy memoranda; guidance documents; instructions; training documents; formal and informal presentations; directives; contracts or agreements; and memoranda of understanding") to the point where you understand the meaning being conveyed in these documents to decide whether it is subject to the request or not?
Then they ask for the fees to be waived. Yeah, good luck with that. What most people here seem to not understand is how this process works. Someone has to address these requests. Let's say you are the unfortunate boob who has to carry out this request. How long do you think it will take you to do that? How many months? Who pays for your time? There isn't some standing army of FOIA responders who are covered on an overhead budget; the money to answer these requests have to come from somewhere, which is where the fees come in. The uninformed here think that the fees are there to discourage FOIA requests, but I hope you can see the difference between asking for something very well targeted and asking for something that will take 3 man years of time to accomplish. And don't be shocked if you do make such a request, that they tell you that your fee would be an amount that works out to be around 3 man years of someone's time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 19 2016, @09:47PM
Everybody knows where it's at. It's at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying beware of the leopard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 20 2016, @04:25AM
A PR stunt is fine, most people have never heard of "parallel construction" nor have any idea how widely it is used. Judges and prosecutors especially need to be made aware so that we can hopefully move away from the "all cops are inherently trustworthy" position that the courts hold.