We already wrote about Monday’s unsealed criminal complaint against two government agents who were key players in investigating Silk Road — but who used that position to steal Bitcoins and a lot of other questionable behavior. Now it comes out that the Justice Department revealed the existence of this investigation to Ross Ulbricht’s lawyers five weeks before Ulbricht’s trial — but then blocked Ulbricht’s legal team from using that information, even as the Justice Department continued to rely on evidence from both of the apparently corrupt federal agents. Ulbricht’s lawyer, Joshua Dratel, has put out a statement pointing out some of the problems here:
In addition to keeping any information about the investigation from the defense for nearly nine months, then revealing it only five weeks prior to trial, and then moving to keep sealed and secret the general underlying information so that Mr. Ulbricht could not use it in his defense at trial, and then stymying the defense at every turn during trial when the defense tried to introduce favorable evidence, the government had also refused to agree to the defense’s request to adjourn the trial until after the indictment was returned and made public – a modest adjournment of a couple of months, since it was apparent that the investigation was nearing a conclusion.
Throughout Mr. Ulbricht’s trial the government repeatedly used the secret nature of the grand jury investigation as an excuse to preclude valuable defense evidence that was not only produced in discovery, independent of the investigation of Mr. Force, but also which was only at best tenuously related to that investigation. In that manner the government deprived the jury of essential facts, and Mr. Ulbricht of due process. In addition, the government failed to disclose previously much of what is in the Complaint, including that two federal law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation were corrupt. It is clear from this Complaint that fundamentally the government’s investigation of Mr. Ulbricht lacked any integrity, and was wholly and fatally compromised from the inside.
Dratel suggests that the corrupt behavior of Force and Bridges raises questions about nearly all aspects of the Ulbricht case, especially since they have already showed that they abused their access to the Silk Road platform in a way that could change the site and account information.
Additional information shows that Force not only acted as “Chief Compliance Officer” for CoinMKT while still employed as a DEA agent (and abusing his ability to use government databases for the job), but as a report from Sarah Jeong at Forbes shows, he also reached out to Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles:
And then even asked about working with Mt. Gox as well, with this bizarre “American government and economy will crash in the next five years” statement:
Just about a month later, when Bridges was the affiant on helping the government seize millions of dollars from Mt. Gox (just days after withdrawing the money he himself allegedly stole from Silk Road), Force emailed Karpeles again, saying “told you should have partnered with me!”
And that doesn’t even get into the fact that the whole “murder plot” that was such a headline grabber in the original criminal complaint only happened after Bridges apparently took the money and Ulbricht reached out to Force to get him to put out a hit on the guy he thought had stolen the money (who had actually been cooperating with the government, which allowed Bridges to get the info to steal the money in the first place).
As we noted in our earlier piece, the criminal complaint shows that Force himself abused his power as a DEA agent to fake a subpoena against Venmo trying to get his own account unfrozen — and it appears that when that didn’t work, Force tried to further abuse his power to seize Venmo’s bank account in response. A snippet from an email he sent to a colleague:
Venmo has since registered with FinCEN, but I want to know if they have state money license remitting licenses in California and New York. Can you check? If not, I want to seize their bank accounts (need to identify them) a la BRIDGES and [M.M.’s] seizure warrants for Mt. Gox.
And here’s the big question: were Bridges and Force really just two “bad apples” in the investigation? Or could it have gone much deeper? As Jeong notes in her report:
During the trial, the defense kept trying to introduce the character of “mr. wonderful,” a Baltimore DHS agent who coerced a Silk Road moderator into giving her account over to law enforcement. Although many of Force’s aliases are listed in the criminal complaint against him, none of them are “mr. wonderful.” (In any case, Force is a DEA agent, and “mr. wonderful” is DHS). Who is mr. wonderful? What exactly did he do?
In other words, whether or not you believe that Ulbricht was DPR, the investigation and trial against him was a complete and utter mess, and these new charges raise an awful lot of questions about the fairness of that trial.
Category: Police
Deployment of Controversial Urban Sensor System Aided by Aggressive Lobbying
“Is NYC’s new gunshot detection system recording private conversations?” asks Fusion in a recent story about ShotSpotter, a sensor technology currently being set up in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
ShotSpotter sensors use microphone and satellite technology to detect, locate and report gunshots to police. Critics worry that the microphones are prone to false alarms, and more troubling, appear to vacuum up street-level conversations in the neighborhoods where it has been installed. Evidence from conversations recorded by ShotSpotter microphones has been used to prosecute criminals in court.
While questions linger for watchdog and privacy groups about the use of ShotSpotter technology, an aggressive lobbying campaign has helped ensure the devices have been deployed in over 90 cities across the country.
The Ferguson Group, a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm, boasts that it secured more than $7 million in federal funding to support the purchase of ShotSpotter. “TFG has conversations with interested communities and discusses process and assesses viability of request [sic], drafts and provides briefing sheets to communities and submits requests to their House and Senate delegation,” reads a case study posted on The Ferguson Group’s website.
ShotSpotter contracts with four D.C. lobbying shops, including the powerhouse Squire Patton Boggs and the Raben Group, the firm that helps orchestrate Mayors Against Illegal Guns, an advocacy group closely aligned with former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and various police unions across the country. The firm also has an array of local and state lobbyists on contract. In New York City, for instance, the company retained Greenberg Traurig in the past, and now works with a former aides to Sheldon Silver and Bloomberg through the firm Mercury Group Public Affairs.
The company’s approach is detailed in emails from Phil Dailly, Southeast Region Sales Director for ShotSpotter, to the City of Miami. Dailly references a supportive city resolution and lists viable funding mechanisms, including purchasing the technology through the Community Oriented Policing program, a special fund administered by the Department of Justice, or through police department asset forfeiture money, funds often raised through drug busts. Promotional materials also list the DOJ’s Justice Assistance Grant program, Public Housing Agencies and Community Benefit Funds as potential funding sources. The company retained two local lobbyists in Miami to help move the process along.
Stun gun’s video-camera footage leads to homicide charges against cop
“At the time officer Mearkle fires both rounds from her pistol, the video clearly depicts Kassick lying on the snow covered lawn with his face toward the ground. Furthermore, at the time the rounds are fired nothing can be seen in either of Kassick’s hands, nor does he point or direct anything toward Officer Mearkle,” the affidavit said.
California bill requires warrant for stingray use
Some actual good news for once
SACRAMENTO, Calif.—A California state bill that would require a warrant to access all kinds of digital data passed its first hurdle after being approved by the Senate Public Safety Committee on Tuesday.
Among other sweeping new requirements to enhance digital privacy, the bill notably imposes a warrant requirement before police can access nearly any type of digital data produced by or contained within a device or service.
In other words, that would include any use of a stingray, also known as a cell-site simulator, which can not only used to determine a phone’s location, but can also intercept calls and text messages. During the act of locating a phone, stingrays also sweep up information about nearby phones—not just the target phone.
Cops To Congress: Please Leave Us And Our License Plates Readers Alone
Poor dears. A bunch of law enforcement associations are worried that they won’t be able to keep all that sweet, sweet ALPR (automatic license plate reader) data for as long as they want to. In fact, they’re so worried, they’ve issued a letter in response to a nonexistent legislative threat.
Despite the fact that no federal license plate legislation has been proposed, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has sent a pre-emptive letter to top Congressional lawmakers, warning them against any future restrictions of automated license plate readers. The IACP claims to be the “world’s oldest and largest association of law enforcement executives.”
The letter is stained with the tears of law enforcement entities whose thirst for bulk collections is only rivaled by national security agencies.
We are deeply concerned about efforts to portray automated license plate recognition (ALPR) technology as a national real-time tracking capability for law enforcement. The fact is that this technology and the data it generates is not used to track people in real time. ALPR is used every day to generate investigative leads that help law enforcement solve murders, rapes, and serial property crimes, recover abducted children, detect drug and human trafficking rings, find stolen vehicles, apprehend violent criminal alien fugitives, and support terrorism investigations.
The “efforts to portray” ALPRs as ad hoc tracking devices aren’t limited to imaginative conspiracy theorists. Millions of plate scans are added to private companies’ databases every day. The total number of records retained by Vigilant, the most prominent manufacturer of ALPRs, totals in the billions. That amount of data can easily be used to track nearly anyone’s day-to-day movements. And the database is accessible by law enforcement agencies around the nation. There’s no geofencing keeping the data compartmentalized to what’s “relevant” to local agencies.
The Foilies Round 4: Retaliation and Consequences
Open government advocates file requests for public records because it’s not only our right, but our duty as citizens to find out what the government is doing in our name, how officials are spending our tax dollars, what kinds of mistakes they’re making, what problems our communities face, and how we can improve society through policy changes.
Unfortunately, some public officials interpret transparency as a threat, best answered not with documents, but intimidation, insults, and other forms of retaliation.
In this fourth and final round of The Foilies—EFF’s Sunshine Week “awards” for outrageous experiences in pursuing public records—we’re focusing on how government agencies (and one rock star) lashed out at citizens and journalists for attempting to unearth unflattering truths. We’ll also cover a few cases where that behavior had consequences.
Texas Lawmaker Wants To Make It Illegal To Film Cops From Less Than 25 Feet Away
Now that it’s pretty much settled that the public has the right to record the police*, legislators are now moving to peel back this begrudgingly “granted” First Amendment protection.
*Exceptions, of course. Far, far too many of them.
Filed by Dallas State Representative Jason Villalba (R), the bill prohibits anyone in public within 25 feet of police to record them. The buffer is even greater at 100 feet, for anyone recording video who is also carrying a gun. Only accredited news organizations, like KENS5, would be allowed to record without the buffer zone.
Guess who gets to decide whether any unaccredited videographers are “too close” to the action? That’s right. It’ll be the person deploying handcuffs or demanding the camera be shut off/relinquished. It will all be in the eye of the uniformed beholder who’s just going to eyeball the distance between him and the unaffiliated bodies of public accountability, and if it’s close, just go ahead and call it a crime. A crime with some rather hefty penalties, considering it involves recording public figures in public areas.
Anyone caught filming within the 25-foot radius could be prosecuted for a Class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. For gun-carriers who step within 100 feet, it would be a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine.
FBI Pins ‘Terrorist’ Nametag On ‘Retarded Fool’ Without A ‘Pot To Piss In’
The FBI’s preference for easily-investigated terrorism is well-documented. We’re routinely assured that all sorts of domestic surveillance tech and agency opacity is necessary to protect us from a whole host of threats, but for the most part, the terrorists “apprehended” by the FBI seem to be people who’ve had the misfortune of being “befriended” by undercover agents and/or confidential informants.
When over 90% of the funding, idea generation, transportation and motivation comes from those saving us from terrorism, we have reason to be worried. While the FBI performs its predatory handcrafting of “extremists,” the real terrorists — who don’t need someone else to provide weapons, money and motivation — are still going about the business of terrorism.
This isn’t to say that all, or even a majority, of the FBI’s anti-terrorist resources are devoted to digging a hole and filling it back up. But a portion of it is, and that portion is squandered completely. And these numbers, gathered by The Intercept, put the squandered portion at nearly 50% of the total.
The Thin Blue Line of Entitlement
Something unnatural is happening in Portland, and Police Union President Daryl Turner isn’t going to put up with it.
The proper order of things is upended. Black is white and white is black, cats and dogs cohabit. Madness!
A judge has disbelieved a cop.
Last week Circuit Judge Diana Stuart acquitted teenager Thai Gurule on juvenile charges of assaulting a police officer, resisting arrest, and attempted assault on a cop. She acquitted him even though the cops said he did it.Is Judge Stuart some sort of pro-criminal agitator? Apparently. In an extensive written order she weighed the testimony of sworn police officers against irrelevant trifles like actual videorecordings of their encounter with Gurule. Even though the cops swore that Gurule threw punches at them, Judge Stuart disbelieved them simply because she could not see any punches on the cell phone videos. Is she some sort of video-fisticuffs expert? Worse than that, she specifically stated that she didn’t find some of their testimony credible. As if they weren’t cops.
But Police Union President Daryl Turner understands the natural order of things, even if this upstart judge doesn’t.
First, Turner understands that when a cop uses force, that decision should be beyond judicial review, and their description of the event beyond question
CIA Worked With DOJ To Re-Purpose Foreign Surveillance Airborne Cell Tower Spoofers For Domestic Use
The CIA’s recent rebranding as Valhalla for US cyberwarriors notwithstanding, the agency’s general focus has been intelligence gathering on foreign governments, corporations and people. That it has often mistaken “torturing people into saying whatever they can to make it stop” for “intelligence gathering” isn’t necessarily germane to the following discussion, but it’s worth noting that the CIA is almost single-handedly responsible for destroying the term “extraordinary rendition” — a formerly innocuous (and complimentary) term previously used to highlight something like, say, Johnny Cash’s amazing cover of Soundgarden’s’ “Rusty Cage.” (That Cash’s two best covers are “Hurt” and “Rusty Cage” is not germane to the discussion of CIA torture programs, but what a coincidence!)
But the emphasis here is foreign. Which is why the following news makes so little sense.
The Central Intelligence Agency played a crucial role in helping the Justice Department develop technology that scans data from thousands of U.S. cellphones at a time, part of a secret high-tech alliance between the spy agency and domestic law enforcement, according to people familiar with the work.
The CIA and the U.S. Marshals Service, an agency of the Justice Department, developed technology to locate specific cellphones in the U.S. through an airborne device that mimics a cellphone tower, these people said.