The NSA sits at the nexus of violations of both the Fourth and Fifth Amendments with a legal dodge called Parallel Construction.
Parallel Construction is a technique used by law enforcement to hide the fact that evidence in a criminal case originated with the NSA. In its simplest form, the NSA collects information showing say a Mr. Anderson committed a crime. This happens most commonly in drug cases. The conclusive information is passed to the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), who then works backwards from the conclusion to create an independent, "legal" body of evidence to use against Mr. Anderson.
Example: an NSA email intercept shows our Mr. Anderson received a Fedex package with drugs, which he hid under his bed. The DEA takes this info, and gets a search warrant for the Fedex data, which leads them to Mr. Anderson's apartment. A new legal warrant authorizes a search, and agents "find" the drugs under the bed right where the NSA said they were in the first place.
Some may call this little more than illegal evidence laundering.
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Tuesday the US government admitted it had been bluffing about its certainty that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysian Air Flight MH-17 over Ukraine.
This dramatic turn of events started with State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf claiming Monday that the State Department's certainty of Russian involvement in the apparent downing of the plane was primarily based on "social media" evidence.
That means with a likely budget of more than $100 billion, the US Intelligence Community is making decisions that may involve global nuclear war based on people's Tweets and YouTubes!
Asked in Monday's State Department briefing about US government evidence for its claims of Russian government involvement and separatist direct blame for the shooting down of the plane, Harf said:
You saw the Secretary yesterday speak very clearly about our assessment that this was an SA-11 fired from Russian-backed, separatist-controlled territory; that we know – we saw in social media afterwards, we saw videos, we saw photos of the pro-Russian separatists bragging about shooting down an aircraft.She added:
Based on open information which is basically common sense, right – we know where it was fired from, we know who has this weaponWho needs evidence — it's "common sense"! Right?
Fixing Facts Around The Policy: Is the US Government Manipulating Social Media?
The US government and in particular the State Department have come under some scrutiny — and even been subject to some ridicule — over increasing reliance on "social media" as evidence to back up US foreign policy positions or conclusions about international events. Many find it shocking that a government which spends some $100 billion on a vast and worldwide intelligence network would really pore over YouTube and Twitter to present user-uploaded items as if finished intelligence products.
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US Support For Ukraine Regime Change — Daniel McAdams With Jay Taylor
RPI Director Daniel McAdams is back with Jay Taylor discussing the disasters of US foreign policy -- from Libya to Iraq to Ukraine. Being interested in facts and not supporting any government makes us suspect according to the interventionists. Pravda of today is in the US. But non-interventionism continues to grow.
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Attacking Ron Paul, National Journal Hits New Lows What a bizarre article about Dr. Paul from the National Journal! Begining from the title, the piece read like something from a high school newspaper.
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We Made It To A Million!
This week marked a milestone for the Ron Paul Institute's Facebook page. For the first time in our short 15 months of existence we chalked up one million people reached over a one week period!
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Col. Lawrence Wilkerson: Reject ‘Raving Maniac’ John McCain; Cooler Heads Can Create Ukraine Peace
While Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is using the downed Malaysia Airlines passenger airplane to justify his call for escalating US military support for the Ukraine government, RPI Academic Board Member Lawrence Wilkerson counters that the key to creating a neutral, at peace, and more prosperous Ukraine is for “cooler heads” to prevail over the calls for military escalation made by people including McCain, whom Wilkerson calls a “raving maniac.”
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