Want to see how secrecy is corrosive to democracy? Look no further than a series of explosive investigations by various news organizations this week that show the government hiding surveillance programs purely to prevent a giant public backlash.



USA Today’s Brad Heath published a blockbuster story on Monday about the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) running a massive domestic spying operation parallel to the NSA’s that was tracking billions of international calls made by Americans. They kept it secret for more than two decades. According to the USA Today report, the spying program was not only used against alleged terrorist activity, but countless supposed drug crimes, as well as “to identify US suspects in a wide range of other investigations”. And they collected information on millions of completely innocent Americans along the way.

Heath’s story is awash with incredible detail and should be read in full, but one of the most interesting parts was buried near the end: the program was shut down by the Justice Department after the Snowden leaks, not because Snowden exposed the program, but because they knew that when the program eventually would leak, the government would have no arguments to defend it.

The justification they were using for the NSA’s program - that it was only being used against dangerous terrorists, not ordinary criminals - just wasn’t true with the DEA. The public would clearly be outraged by the twisted legal justification that radically re-interpreted US law in complete secrecy. “They couldn’t defend both programs”, a former Justice Department official told Heath. The piece also reveals that Attorney General Eric Holder “didn’t think we should have that information” in the first place, which is interesting because Holder was one of the first Justice Department officials to approve the program during the Clinton administration. It’s nice he came to his senses, but if the program never risked going public, would he have felt the same?

There are many other surveillance programs the government is desperate to keep hidden. Consider Stingray devices, the mini fake cell phone towers that can vacuum up cell phone data of entire neighborhoods at the same time and which are increasingly being used by local cops all around the country. The Associated Press reported this week that the Baltimore police have used these controversial devices thousands of times in the course of ordinary investigations and have tried to hide how the devices are used from judges.

The lengths to which the FBI will go to keep these devices secret from the public is alarming. As a Guardian investigation detailed on Friday, the FBI makes local police that use them sign non-disclosure agreements, and goes as far as to direct them to dismiss charges against potential criminals if the phone surveillance will be exposed at trial (as is required by due process rights in the Fifth Amendment).

The AP recounted this extraordinary courtroom exchange about the non-disclosure agreements that took place between a defense attorney and a Baltimore detective:

“Does it instruct you to withhold evidence from the state’s attorney and the circuit court of Baltimore city, even if upon order to produce?” asked defense attorney Joshua Insley. “Yes,” Cabreja replied, saying he spoke with the FBI last week about the case.

Why is the FBI going so far as to ignore judges’ court orders and basically obstruct justice? The government has claimed in the past that it doesn’t want what director Jim Comey refers to as “bad people” finding out how this technology works. But the details are widely available online, and have been reported on in detail by virtually every major news organization. It’s more likely that the FBI is trying to prevent the inevitable fallout when they have to admit that they are sucking up the cell phone information of thousands of innocent people - and the fourth amendment challenges that would follow.

If the government wants to use mass surveillance techniques against the public, that should be up to the public, not a decision made in secret knowing ordinary Americans would freak out if they found out.