government accountability

RSG #361: How To Trace Government Evidence That Was Collected but Never Examined

Government agencies collect phones, computers, DNA samples, financial records, surveillance footage, documents, fingerprints, weapons, photographs, and entire storage devices. The existence of an evidence receipt proves that an item entered government custody. It does not prove that anyone examined it. That distinction matters. Evidence can be photographed, packaged, numbered, stored, transferred, rejected by a laboratory, …

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Resistance Kitty examines a broken evidence pipeline showing six steps for tracing evidence that never reached prosecutors, from proving the evidence existed through reporting only what the records prove.

RSG #360: How To Trace Evidence That Never Reached Prosecutors

An investigator collects an interview, photograph, recording, financial record, forensic result, or digital extraction. The evidence enters an agency file. Then, somewhere between collection and prosecution, it stops moving. Sometimes the explanation is ordinary. The evidence was duplicative, unrelated, legally unusable, transferred elsewhere, or received after a decision was made. Sometimes an agent failed to …

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RSG #359: How To Audit the Government’s Handling of Witness Recantations

RSG #359: How To Audit the Government’s Handling of Witness Recantations

A witness changes her story. An informant withdraws an accusation. A cooperating defendant admits that his first account was incomplete. Suddenly, the government must decide whether it has received a meaningful correction, a frightened retreat, a tactical lie, or evidence that its case has been wobbling around in borrowed heels. A witness recantation does not …

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RSG #358: How To Reconstruct a Federal Investigation From Attorney Proffer Records

RSG #358: How To Reconstruct a Federal Investigation From Attorney Proffer Records

Federal investigations do not always advance through subpoenas, raids, and dramatic courthouse entrances. Sometimes an attorney calls a prosecutor and says, in careful lawyer language, “My client may know something useful, but we would prefer not to stroll blindly into criminal exposure.” That conversation may lead to an attorney proffer, a client proffer session, a …

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RSG #351: How To Reconstruct an Epstein Investigation From Closing Records

An investigation rarely ends with a dramatic official stamping “CASE CLOSED” across a folder while violins play in the background. More often, it ends through a quiet collection of memoranda, database entries, supervisor approvals, evidence instructions, referral notices, declination decisions, and administrative forms. Those closing records can reveal what investigators examined, which allegations they pursued, …

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RSG #350: How To Track Epstein Evidence Referred Between Government Agencies

RSG #350: How To Track Epstein Evidence Referred Between Government Agencies

Evidence does not always remain with the agency that first receives it. A complaint submitted to the FBI may be forwarded to a field office, federal prosecutor, inspector general, state agency, or another federal department. A document located during a Freedom of Information Act search may also be referred to the agency that originally created …

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RSG #343: How To Audit Government Blacklists and Informal Exclusion Systems

RSG #343: How To Audit Government Blacklists and Informal Exclusion Systems

Government agencies maintain lists for legitimate administrative reasons. Some identify suspended contractors. Others flag safety concerns, regulate access to secure facilities, screen travelers, restrict licenses, or prevent people from participating in government programs. Then there are the lists nobody wants to call lists. A person may discover that she has been quietly marked as disruptive, …

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RSG#335: How To Audit Predictive Policing Systems and Their Hidden Feedback Loops

Predictive policing systems promise to help police anticipate where crime might happen or who might become involved. The sales pitch usually arrives carrying words such as objective, efficient, intelligent, and data driven. Nothing says impartial justice quite like a vendor presentation with a glowing heat map. The problem is that these systems do not observe …

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RSG #334: How To Investigate Parallel Construction and Intelligence Laundering

A criminal case may appear to begin with a traffic stop, an informant, or one officer experiencing a miraculous burst of curiosity. Sometimes that visible beginning is not the beginning. Parallel construction occurs when investigators protect an original source by creating a separate path to the same evidence. Civil liberties advocates sometimes call the abusive …

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RSG#329: How To Audit Government Other Transaction Agreements

Resistance Survival Guide #329 The federal government has contracts. It has grants. It has cooperative agreements. Then it has Other Transaction Agreements, a category whose name sounds as though somebody forgot to finish the form. Other Transaction Agreements can help agencies develop prototypes, conduct research, work with companies that avoid traditional federal contracting, and move …

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