DEA Improperly Paid Amtrak Worker $850,000 for Passenger Info that It Could Have Gotten for Free.

This
is almost beyond belief. Sadly, it’s rock-solid reporting
from the AP.

The Drug Enforcement Administration paid an Amtrak secretary
$854,460 over nearly 20 years to obtain confidential information
about train passengers…

The employee was not publicly identified except as a “secretary
to a train and engine crew” in a report on the incident by Amtrak’s
inspector general. The secretary was allowed to retire, rather than
face administrative discipline, after the discovery that the
employee had effectively been acting as an informant who
“regularly” sold private passenger information since 1995 without
Amtrak’s approval, according to a one-paragraph summary of the
matter.

You’ve got to almost admire the entrepreneurial Amtrak employee.
Almost, but not quite (it turns out she was breaking rules not by
handing over the info but by doing it without telling her superiors
and acting as a paid informant).

But you’ve got to be totally agog at the DEA for at least two
reasons. First, that they were doing this in the first place in
what appears to be pretty random fashion.

And second, because the “DEA could have lawfully obtained
for free through a law enforcement network, The Associated Press
has learned” (emphasis added).

And there’s this:

Under a joint drug enforcement task force that includes the DEA
and Amtrak’s own police agency, the task force can obtain Amtrak
confidential passenger reservation information at no cost, the
inspector general’s report said. Under an agreement, Amtrak police
would receive a share of any money seized as a result of such drug
task force investigations, and Amtrak’s inspector general concluded
that DEA’s purchase of the passenger information deprived the
Amtrak Police Department of money it would have received from
resulting drug arrests.

Got that?

Read the whole thing.

Via the Twitter feed
of Michael Hewlett.

Back in 2001, Reason’s Mike Lynch did the math on some of those
seizures, including the case of Sam
Thach, a Vietnamese immigrant who made the mistake of buying a
ticket in cash. Back then, Amtrak’s cut was 10
percent of the loot seized. As is often the case in such
seizures, it’s up to the individual being rolled to prove they are
innocent.

Reason on
Amtrak.

Reason on DEA.