I have nothing to hide . . .

You hear this so often: I have nothing to hide (so it’s OK for the NSA to read my email). Really?

What if they spy on you without any probable cause, find out that you possess drugs, then they turn this information over to the DEA, which pretends it didn’t get this information from the NSA, then recreates the path necessary to put you in prison? Far fetched?

A secretive U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration unit is funneling information from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a massive database of telephone records to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans.

Although these cases rarely involve national security issues, documents reviewed by Reuters show that law enforcement agents have been directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin – not only from defense lawyers but also sometimes from prosecutors and judges.

The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.

What else could happen to those of you who have never committed a crime? How about identity theft? How about some NSA contractor stealing your passwords to your financial institutions? This is an agency with no accountability, with hundreds of thousands of employees with the technical ability to read all of your most private information. How about screwing up your computer as they search through it with the viruses they manufacture? Far Fetched?

Why should we be concerned? Check out this video. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/05/dea-surveillance-cover-up_n_3706207.html

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Avatar of Michael Morris
    Michael Morris

    According to Daniel Ellsberg, people who say they have nothing to hide (and that government can spy as much as they want) are really saying that they never plan to challenge the government. Or in other words, they are unwittingly ceding their ability to ever challenge their government.

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