Is the DEA Using NSA Warrantless Surveillance Data in Domestic Drug Investigations?

Maybe so, according to a recent Reuters report. Apparently, the Special Operations Division of the DEA receives information from the NSA and passes it to DEA field agents. The agents then begin criminal investigations based on the information. There are two possible problems with the program described by Reuters. End run around privacy protections. First, the NSA collects huge amounts of data under permissive legal standards because the data is gathered in the interest of national security. Allowing that data to be used for domestic law enforcement purposes, where a higher legal standard applies to data collection, could amount to an end run around the privacy protections that apply in the criminal justice system. As a Washington Post blog notes here, the NSA-DEA pipeline may “break down the barrier between foreign counterterrorism investigations and ordinary domestic criminal investigations.” It’s hard to analyze this issue further without specific information about what types of data are being collected and shared. Some data is more protected – under the Fourth Amendment and under federal statutes such as the Stored Communications Act – than other data, and the Reuters story lacks detail about the nature of the information provided by the NSA. Falsification of evidence. Second, the DEA agents who receive the information apparently are “directed to conceal how such investigations truly begin.” Reuters explains: A former federal agent . . . described the process. “You’d be told only, ‘Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.’ [...]