“Volunteers” of the Drug Administration secretly searches the luggage and mail of Americans

Фото: Depositphotos

The US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) paid $5 million over five years to volunteers who searched Americans' luggage and mail for drugs or drug-related items.

For the federal agency, checking private property is considered a violation of the fourth amendment to the US Constitution, but the Drug Enforcement Administration has the right to recruit “volunteers” working at railway stations, airlines or postal companies that check customers' things, reports BuzzFeed.

Data on their work was made public in report about checking the activities of the DEA.

Employees of transport and postal companies check items of customers or passengers in the hope of finding cash or drugs (a bundle that may contain drugs) in order to receive a cash reward from the Drug Administration.

When viewing bags at airports, control officers are more likely to report a suspicious package in a passenger's suitcase in the DEA than to their immediate superiors.

They were all part of the DEA program, which the Administration called confidential “restricted use” sources, it worked for 5 years.

An investigation by the Department of Justice showed that informers were awarded fairly generously, so they could be given tasks to transfer not only information about suspicious packages, but also other private data of Americans that the Administration could use for their own purposes.

Some informants received more money from the Administration than on their main job.

For example, an employee of the airline for the year 4 received from DEA $ 600 thousand, and an employee of the postal company for 5 years earned more than $ 1 million.

At the same time, the Administration does not keep records of what it received from this program: only successful cases were recorded, false informants and erroneous reports were not recorded.

The program was quite extensive. From 2011 to 2015, the Drug Enforcement Administration distributed $237 million to 10 informants, including $27 million to 477 “restricted use” informants. In addition, there are no calculations regarding the efficiency ratio of these expenses and the work of informants.

At the moment, the Administration has developed a number of reforms that are aimed at changing the system of using informants and deriving a more efficient formula for their work.

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