Agencies Falsify Investigation Histories to Mask Unconstitutional Involvement in Prosecutions

All of this spying the federal government does sometimes leads to criminal investigations for things like drug violations. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and National Security Agency (NSA) are all spying on Americans, and these agencies share information. The domestic spying is bad enough, but there is something even more sinister going on. Investigators sometimes alter records of investigations to conceal how and why the investigations began. An investigating agency such as the DEA can recreate and investigation to account for evidence that may have been obtained unconstitutionally.

To learn more about how agencies like the DEA recreate investigations to conceal the actual histories of the investigations, read, the Reuters article about the Special Operation Division (SOD), "U.S. Directs Agents to Cover up Program Used to Investigate Americans," by John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke.

Shoshana Hebshi Strip-Searched After Sitting Next to Suspicious Men on Plane

Shoshana Hebshi

Shoshana Hebshi, a half-Jewish and half-Arabic woman, was strip-searched after sitting next to two Indian men who were accused of acting suspicious on a Frontier Airlines flight from Denver to Detroit on September 11, 2011. The flight crew reported the two men for spending too much time in the bathroom.

Upon landing at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, the plane was isolated and stormed by heavily armed police. The police handcuffed Hebshi and the two suspicious men and removed them from the plane. Hebshi was patted down and placed in the back of a police car. She was then taken to a holding cell and forced to remove her clothes for a strip-search.

Guess what they found on Hebshi. They found nothing. Shoshana Hebshi is not a terrorist. She is a mom who just happened to look a little too Middle-Eastern and just happened to sit next to some Indian men who went to the bathroom too often for some people to accept. By the way, the Indian men did not even know each other, and they were never in the bathroom together. One of the men was sick, and the other man probably had some other good reason to visit the bathroom. They were not terrorists either. There were no weapons. There were no bombs. There was no plot. There was nothing. All three people were innocent.

What happened here is three perfectly innocent people were bullied and harassed for looking a little too ethnic. It is ridiculous that Indian people are not allowed to visit the bathroom more than an average number of times without setting off some national security emergency. It is even more ridiculous a woman was singled out just because she was sitting in the wrong seat near such Indian men.

Shoshana Hebshi was robbed of her dignity for absolutely no good reason, and she--along with the Indian men--need to sue Frontier Airlines, the Detroit Metropolitan Airport Police, the FBI, and ever other bungling institution that was involved in this incredibly humiliating overreaction.

You can read the whole story on Shoshana Hebshi's blog.

Monitoring America

The Washington Post is running an excellent, in-depth article about extensive surveillance of ordinary Americans. The article, "Monitoring America," by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin details a vast network of databases, computers systems, and information-sharing programs used by law enforcement to watch and track virtually everyone in a broad variety of ways such as facial scans, license plate scans, cellphone tracking, civilian reports, undercover infiltrations of activists groups, FBI files, etc.