blueprint for abuse

[dilletante]

it's been a pretty good year for fans of movie-style conspiracy-thriller plots. no need to go to the theater; just read the headlines! today's favorite: investigative journalist was looking into cia crackdown on investigative journalism just before his mysterious death. such wackiness

Comments

[nakor]

Well, they can't prosecute it, right?

So lets say there has been some small abuse, in small ways. It's probably been caught; if Arnie is stalking his wife with XKeyscore, the office will know. And there are honest people there who need to do something about it---and the organization needs to do something about it to keep those honest people. But we don't see prosecutions for it, and the FISC sure isn't hearing criminal cases.

Logically, therefore, there must be a secret justice system for administrative punishments: fines, work reassignment, maybe at higher levels digging up dirt on you for normal cops to prosecute. That's where I would look: contractors and staff who lose clearances or are prosecuted or divorced for apparently unrelated reasons, but at a rate higher than expected.

[dilletante]

Well, they can't prosecute it, right?

yeah, that takes a lot of the force out of "oh, that would be illegal, of course we aren't doing that," doesn't it?

the organization needs to do something about it to keep those honest people.

i think you meant to use the subjunctive, here. the organization would need to do something about it, to retain honest people. nothing logically requires the organization to make retaining honest people a priority.

in fact, we know it's been bleeding honest people in ridiculously high-profile ways (cf Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden). the institutional response that we know about has been a broad program to detect and punish honesty.

this does not fill me with confidence.

[dilletante]

your response brings up a distinction i'd meant to talk more about, though: abuse in support of institutional vs personal goals.

digging up dirt on a reporter to stop him from writing about james clapper sleeping with his neighbor's wife (i made this up) is abuse in pursuit of personal goals. in general, everybody considers this corrupt.

digging up dirt on a reporter to stop him from writing about james clapper lying to congress about the nsa is abuse in pursuit of institutional goals.

the second one is still corruption, still abuse. our government loves to point it out when other governments pull that shit. i'm not sure it considers it abuse when we do it, though. the dea openly brags about preferentially pursuing people who speak out against the drug war, for instance.

[fennel]

the dea openly brags about preferentially pursuing people who speak out against the drug war, for instance.

Do you have a URL for more on this? Either it's news to me, or it pissed me off enough that I blocked it out.

[dilletante]

i was thinking particularly of the extradition of marc emery, a seed wholesaler and pro-pot activist in canada, who appears not to have done anything actually illegal in canada and to have barely done so here-- after an expensive and high-profile extradition and much smearing as a drug kingpin he ultimately got five years, but most of his profits had been going into legalization efforts-- the link is to a dea press release crowing that "Drug legalization lobbyists now have one less pot of money to rely on."

i was also thinking of pain-relief activist siobhan reynolds, but on re-reading i see that it was prosecutor tanya treadway, not the dea, who had siobhan reynolds charged with secret crimes (reynolds was unable to get the records unsealed, on appeal all the way to the supreme court) apparently for putting up a billboard ad proclaiming the innocence of a doctor charged with over-prescribing pain medication.

[hissilliness]

Thank you. That press release is something real special.

[fennel]

That press release is stomach-turning. I'm not sure I had, in fact, realized that the DEA had formally crossed the line from having an official *stance* that legalization is bad, to explicitly considering it part of their job to *stop* it. (I had of course assumed that behind closed doors that was true, but it's chilling to see it in press releases.)

[dilletante]

I'm not sure I had, in fact, realized that the DEA had formally crossed the line from having an official *stance* that legalization is bad, to explicitly considering it part of their job to *stop* it.

it is, of course, an explicit part of the office of national drug-control policy's job.