Undercover Operations Growing in 'Every Corner of the Federal Government'

Holy crap. I wish this shit wasn't going on under a Democratic POTUS.

And I know it won't get any better with Hillary Clinton in the WH.

Undercover Operations Growing in 'Every Corner of the Federal Government': New York Times
Covert intelligence-gathering missions threaten civil liberties, critics warn
by Nadia Prupis, staff writer * Saturday, November 15, 2014 * Common Dreams

Undercover operations, once the domain of the FBI, have expanded to "virtually every corner of the federal government," a New York Times investigation published Saturday found—and the scope of those missions has become so wide that it risks abusing civil liberties and possible entrapment of targets.

Officers from at least 40 agencies played various roles in the operations—student protesters, doctors, business people, and welfare recipients among them—to investigate "wrongdoing," according to the Times. At the Internal Revenue Service, for example, officers posed as accountants to investigate tax evasion.

But often, the operations involved officers infiltrating political rallies outside of state courthouses to look for "suspicious activity," or pretending to be food stamp recipients at neighborhood grocers to suss out welfare fraud.
"[C]hanges in policies and tactics over the last decade have resulted in undercover teams run by agencies in virtually every corner of the federal government, according to officials, former agents and documents," the Times writes.

In addition to civil liberties concerns, the investigation also found that the expanded operations resulted in "hidden problems"—such as missing money and compromised investigations, as well as a troubling internal structure that left agents on their own for months at a time. In one case, a Florida police chief who used undercover missions to look into drug money laundering was fired from his position after an audit revealed "financial lapses."

Undercover work can be a "very effective law enforcement method, but it carries serious risks," former FBI undercover agent and New York University law fellow Michael German told the Times. "Ultimately it is government deceitfulness and participation in criminal activity, which is only justifiable when it is used to resolve the most serious crimes."

http://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/11/15/undercover-operations-growing-every-corner-federal-government-new-york-times