Freelance spies
Gee, I didn’t know people were allowed to set up “sting” operations without any kind of legal authority.
A network of conservative activists, aided by a British former spy, mounted a campaign during the Trump administration to discredit perceived enemies of President Trump inside the government, according to documents and people involved in the operations.
The campaign included a planned sting operation against Mr. Trump’s national security adviser at the time, H.R. McMaster, and secret surveillance operations against F.B.I. employees, aimed at exposing anti-Trump sentiment in the bureau’s ranks.
See this is what I mean. That stuff is illegal if you don’t have a warrant and stuff, isn’t it? People can’t just do “sting operations” and “secret surveillance” on their own, without any kind of law enforcement authority, isn’t it? Or am I hopelessly out of touch.
The operations against the F.B.I., run by the conservative group Project Veritas, were conducted from a large home in the Georgetown section of Washington that rented for $10,000 per month. Female undercover operatives arranged dates with the F.B.I. employees with the aim of secretly recording them making disparaging comments about Mr. Trump.
Since when is a random person spying on people with no authorization to do so an “undercover operative”?
Central to the effort, according to interviews, was Richard Seddon, a former undercover British spy who was recruited in 2016 by the security contractor Erik Prince to train Project Veritas operatives to infiltrate trade unions, Democratic congressional campaigns and other targets. He ran field operations for Project Veritas until mid-2018.
Isn’t all of that completely illegal? The government shouldn’t be doing it either, mostly, but at least when the government does it there is legal supervision and some accountability. (I say “mostly” because, you know, insurrections and stuff.)
Don’t private investigators do stuff like this all the time, presumably legally?
I had a coworker who it turns out was cheating on their husband. His family was suspicious but he trusted her and said they were crazy. They hired a P.I., and a few months later he gave the family a big file with pictures of the cheating wife and her boyfriend, descriptions of what they’d been doing, etc. Just like in the movies.
I think it mostly comes down to individual laws. If it’s legal in your jurisdiction to tape someone without their knowledge, then you can, etc. If you don’t break any individual laws during your amateur sting operation then I think it’s legal.
Maybe so. I’m not sure of my ground. It just seems so bizarrely high-handed.
I always thought PIs required a license, permit, or whatever.
I’m sure they’d watched lots of spy movies and stuff, so they knew what they were doing.
Journalists also do undercover operations all the time.
Look at it this way. They are right in the spirit of the frontier pioneers. Daniel Boone would have been proud of them. Also they are heart and soul in the spirit of free enterprise, which made America great and will do so again if all the namby pambies, wimps and shrinking violets would just getto buggery out of the way.
And that’s why I think Trump is (at a very safe distance probably) behind it.
The last time Project Veritas was in the news was a few years back when they ran those stings against Planned Parenthood, trying to get PP to admit to nefarious or illegal things like selling body parts or the like. PP doesn’t do those things, so all PV got was some hidden camera footage of awkward conversations with PP personnel.
But some of the things PV did to get that footage were not legal, and their agents did face some legal repercussions. (I forget the details.)
You’d probably be (unpleasantly) surprised at how much surveillance at work is legally allowed in the US. Much of the law seems to come down to:
Eric Prince? The Eric Prince whose sister was given a rather important job in Trump’s administration? I wouldn’t be surprised if there had been plants in her department, too, as well as many of the others under the control of Trump’s toadies.
Yes, that Erik Prince.