FBI San Diego, Drug Investigations and 9/11

["Jason Coombs" <jasonc () science org>]

Hello, Kelly.

I'm writing in response to your article from today in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

San Diego FBI Officials Call 9/11 Criticism 'Dead Horse'
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/terror/20050609-2002-terrorfolo.html

I work as an expert witness in civil and criminal court cases involving computer forensics and information security.

In 2003 I became involved as expert witness on behalf of a defendant in a Federal criminal drug prosecution case in San 
Diego county.

In the course of the law enforcement investigation, which occurred prior to the PATRIOT Act, the FBI computer forensics 
lab in San Diego assisted the DEA with Internet wiretaps of the suspects' computers, possibly in violation of wiretap 
laws, which at the time had no reference to Internet type data communications electronic intercepts.

The defendant was tried and convicted, and the case is now pending appeal.

During my review of the case on behalf of the defendant, I was shocked to see how far and how long law enforcement 
allowed the suspects to operate their drug operation in San Diego.

Instead of arresting the suspects when the FBI and DEA had conclusive proof of crimes, law enforcement seems to have 
toyed with the suspects, dragging out the investigation and making it absurdly complicated and costly. Law enforcement 
had proof sufficient to convict several months before the first drug sale occurred in the case, and they sat and 
watched, as though they were more interested in playing with their shiny new computer surveillance toys than in putting 
an end to the drug crimes in progress so they could move on to more important things, like the terrorists known to the 
CIA to be inside our country, who by coincidence lived virtually next-door to these drug offenders in San Diego.

Law enforcement delayed making arrests in this drug case until their priorities were changed after 9/11.

Meanwhile, drugs were being manufactured and sold in San Diego within full video surveillance and other plain view of 
the FBI and DEA.

I'm certain that I'm allowed to talk about the case now that it is over, and the defendant on whose behalf I did my 
work previously expressed a willingness to have his case publicized.

If you're interested in this story, let me know and I can put you in contact with the defendant in the case.

He and his criminal associates appeared to be non-violent drug offenders who became guinea pigs for the development of 
the FBI and DEA's electronic intercept investigations techniques, which paved the way for parts of the PATRIOT Act 
which subsequently granted authorities additional capabilities to use computer surveillance technology in ways that I 
believe are inappropriate.

Computer electronic intercepts allow automated intelligence gathering according to sophisticated automated rules, in 
effect allowing computers to do, through the use of secret law enforcement software, what human law enforcement would 
never be allowed by law to do themselves.

For this and other reasons, all electronic intercepts that use computer software to analyze data (including voice 
recognition processing of digital audio) may be a violation of our various Constitutional protections. They certainly 
create opportunity for systematic abuses, and in the absence of a cultural bias toward full disclosure there is very 
real possibility of harm to the public interest.

We all know by now how little effort anyone in the law enforcement community put into overcoming institutional and case 
management barriers that made it culturally, politically, and in some respects legally impossible within our country to 
take proactive and imaginative yet constitutionally-correct actions to advance the early detection of serious violent 
crime like 9/11.

What I find amazing about the case I worked on was the extent to which the system that we still have today continues to 
create unproductive barriers that make law enforcement mistakes and courtroom rules completely unresponsive to, and 
disinterested in, positive change and procedural enlightenment.

The idea that law enforcement is entitled to have and hold secrets, and have their transgressions covered up by 
cooperative judges -- in effect granting law enforcement the flexibility to make up the rules whenever they like, which 
is essentially what the PATRIOT Act has granted free license to do, and what the Bush administration is now requesting 
by way of extensions to PATRIOT -- the idea that these extra powers somehow solve the underlying systemic problems that 
allowed the 9/11 conspiracy to unfold is just wrong.

It is systemic flaws that cause law enforcement and the courts to invest huge sums of money into extremely complex and 
lengthy drug investigations instead of quickly and efficiently prosecuting small offenses before they grow into larger 
ones.

And it is systemic flaws that allow otherwise-good people who have drug, debt, and career problems to be destroyed by 
society rather than receive help from its protective machinery, all while real threats to public safety are 
institutionally ignored.

This case illustrates better than any I have seen before just how wrong the double standard is that we apply to 
non-violent drug offenders. They are part of society and deserve its protection, yet we assign teams of people to 
investigate and watch their activities every minute of every day, track their movements with GPS and wireless 
technology, and intercept all of their communications, all according to a belief that these people are a threat to, 
rather than a part of, America.

Such persons are a part of America and need protection from themselves, perhaps. They are certainly a part of America 
whose problems should not be permitted unnecessarily to grow to the point that they cause harm to others. Strangely, 
harm to others was a foregone conclusion made not by the drug offenders but by lawmakers,law enforcement, the public, 
and the courts, who see fit to create millions of dollars of financial burden for taxpayers over the lifetime of a 
career criminal rather than intervene when common sense says the public's intervention has a chance to rehabilitate the 
offender.

Does the offender not deserve protection from the harmful psychological and biochemical effects of the very drugs that 
become their ticket to a mandatory life sentence in Federal prison?

Drug offenders who appear to represent little or no threat to the public safety other than their own drug addictions 
and lack of access to conventional employment, whom could in fact be set straight as productive law-abiding 
rehabilitated members of society at a fraction of the cost of merely investigating their criminal activities much less 
prosecuting and then handling appeals court procedures concerning them, these people receive a huge percentage of 
taxpayers' law enforcement and public safety money.

We entrust a needlessly-complex system with their care and protection without making an effort to know what that system 
is doing, and we are now giving that system more license to operate in secret, based on the idea that these people are 
the enemy.

It just may be the case that increasingly our own decisions and misjudgments are the real enemy, yet we ensure that we 
are never confronted with this possibility by the degree to which we demonize all criminals and removing from them 
their status first and foremost as human beings who obviously have serious problems.

That the defendant in the instant case clearly does not have a malicious desire to harm others should mean something 
but it does not. He will most likely remain a prisoner for the rest of his life, as a direct result of the misguided 
priorities of the system of criminal law and justice that we have created today.

It was imminently within the grasp of the justice system during the year 2000 to put a stop to a growing drug offense 
very early in its development, giving the drug offenders access to care and a prison sentence that would have been less 
than the rest of their natural lives, and in so doing free up the very resources in San Diego that would have been 
capable, and were entrusted with the responsibility, to find and stop terrorists operating in San Diego.

The FBI in San Diego missed the opportunity to stop 9/11 because they were busy wasting taxpayer money allowing drugs 
to be sold in San Diego just so they could get a bigger prison sentence for the offenders and so they could practice 
and perfect their computer skills.

We, the people who allow this government to operate on our behalf in this manner and without our oversight or 
involvement, we are to blame for this systemic problem just as much if not more than the hard-working and honorable law 
enforcement officers who risk their lives to protect us.

I can assure you from first-hand observation that the systemic flaws remain, and that unless they are solved there will 
be more negative consequences of expanding the power of law enforcement to act in secret in order to comply with our 
country's senseless mandates that compel us to create as many prisoners as possible.

Sincerely,

Jason Coombs
jasonc () science org
http://www.science.org/jcoombs/
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