{"id":8417,"date":"2017-07-21T16:45:14","date_gmt":"2017-07-22T00:45:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/07\/21\/news-2191\/"},"modified":"2017-07-21T16:45:14","modified_gmt":"2017-07-22T00:45:14","slug":"news-2191","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2017\/07\/21\/news-2191\/","title":{"rendered":"A GAO Sting Scored $1.2 Million in Weapons From an Unsuspecting Department of Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: Eli Hager| Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:33:05 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project<\/a>, a nonprofit news organization that covers the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter<\/a>, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook<\/a> or Twitter<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

When you think of a federal sting operation involving weaponry and military gear, the Government Accountability Office doesn\u2019t immediately jump to mind. The office is tasked with auditing other federal agencies to root out fraud and abuse, usually by asking questions and poring over paperwork.<\/p>\n

This year, the agency went a little more cowboy. The GAO created a fictitious law enforcement agency\u2014complete with a fake website and a bogus address that traced back to an empty lot\u2014and applied for military-grade equipment from the Department of Defense.<\/p>\n

And in less than a week, they got it.<\/p>\n

A GAO report<\/a> issued this week says the agency\u2019s faux cops were able to obtain $1.2 million worth of military gear, including night-vision goggles, simulated M-16A2 rifles, and pipe bomb material from the Defense Department\u2019s 1033 program, which supplies state and local law enforcement with excess materiel. The rifles and bomb equipment could have been made functional with widely available parts, the report said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey never did any verification, like visit our \u2018location,\u2019 and most of it was by email,\u201d said Zina Merritt, director of the GAO\u2019s defense capabilities and management team, which ran the operation. \u201cIt was like getting stuff off of Ebay.\u201d<\/p>\n

In its response to the sting, the Defense Department promised to tighten its verification procedures, including trying to visit the location of law enforcement agencies that apply and making sure agents picking up supplies have valid identification, the GAO report said. The department also promised to do an internal fraud assessment by April 2018.<\/p>\n

A Defense Department spokesman declined to comment further.<\/p>\n

'It was like getting stuff off of Ebay.' \u2013 Zina Merritt, GAO<\/p>\n

The sting operation has its roots in the 2014 fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. At the time, many were surprised to see law enforcement respond to protests with armored trucks, sniper rifles, tear-gas bombs, and other weapons of war.<\/p>\n

Reporting by The Marshall Project<\/a> and others found that much of the equipment came from the obscure 1033 program, which dates back to the Clinton era. Any equipment the US military was not using\u2014including Humvees, grenades, scuba-diving gear, and even marching-band instruments\u2014was available to local cops who could demonstrate a need.<\/p>\n

The program has transferred more than $6 billion worth of supplies to more than 8,600 law enforcement agencies since 1991.<\/p>\n

After Ferguson, then-President Barack Obama issued an executive order prohibiting the military from giving away some equipment and deeming other equipment \u201ccontrolled,\u201d establishing strict oversight and training requirements for law enforcement agencies that wanted it. The order also required a Defense Department and Justice Department working group<\/a> to ensure oversight.<\/p>\n

But since President Donald Trump took office, the group has not met, according to the Constitution Project, a legal and policy advocacy organization that had been participating in the meetings. Trump has said<\/a> that he will revoke Obama\u2019s executive order, although he has not yet.<\/p>\n

Congress ordered the GAO to look into the program last year. A survey of local law enforcement did not turn up any instances of outright abuse at the state level, but did find one illegitimate agency that had applied as a federal entity and was approved for equipment, Merritt said.<\/p>\n

Taser\u2019s Free Body Cameras Are Good for Cops, Not the People<\/p>\n

The Eternal Search for a Gun That Doesn't Kill<\/p>\n

For One Police Force, Body Cams Are Critical—Not Annoying<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when the agency launched the sting. Contrary to its public image, GAO has snagged other agencies with undercover work in the past, including an investigation of the Affordable Care Act<\/a> in which the agency submitted fictitious applications, and got approved, for subsidized healthcare coverage.<\/p>\n

In this case, the GAO created the fake law enforcement agency\u2014whose name the GAO would not reveal \u2014 and it claimed did high-level security and counterterrorism work. Once approved, the agency easily obtained the items from a Defense Department warehouse of unused military goods.<\/p>\n

Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, which lists rescinding Obama\u2019s executive order one of its top priorities for the Trump administration, said the possibility of fraud does not indict the whole program.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt suggests only that the US military is one of the world\u2019s largest bureaucracies and as such is going to have some lapses in material control,\u201d Pasco said. \u201cLaw enforcement is going to get that equipment and we\u2019re going to use it, to protect both officers and civilians. And if we don\u2019t get it free from the military, we\u2019re going to have to buy it with taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to Madhuri Grewal, senior counsel for the Constitution Project, and other opponents of police militarization, the problem is more fundamental.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere just aren\u2019t many everyday policing uses for military equipment like this,\u201d Grewal said. \u201cThe question is why can real law enforcement agencies get some of this stuff, let alone fake ones?\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Look, we get it. Remembering dozens and dozens of different passwords for different sites is next to impossible. But that doesn\u2019t mean you should be reusing your passwords. That\u2019s just asking for trouble.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.wired.com\/category\/security\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<\/p>\n

Credit to Author: Eli Hager| Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2017 21:33:05 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

A federal sting reveals lax oversight in the Defense Department\u2019s gear giveaway program.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10378,10607],"tags":[714],"class_list":["post-8417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-security","category-wired","tag-security"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}