Earlier this week, Reuters revealed that the various intelligence agencies give the DEA info through its SOD - Special Operations Division - and then DEA agents are instructed to "launder" where they got the info from, so they don't have to reveal to the people they arrest how they were caught. This is almost certainly illegal, as the discovery process is pretty clear that the government needs to turn over its evidence. In the article, DEA officials seemed almost cavalier about the whole thing, noting that they'd been doing it for decades. Of course, now that it's public, it took all of a day for the DOJ - which clearly has known about this all along - to say that it's now reviewing the program:

The Justice Department is reviewing a US Drug Enforcement Administration unit that passes tips culled from intelligence intercepts, wiretaps, informants and a large telephone database to field agents, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday.

Reuters also points out that the DEA officials they had interviewed claimed that the DOJ had reviewed the program regularly, and deemed it legal. The fact that the DOJ is suddenly kicking off a new "investigation" the day after the program becomes public is really questionable - but par for the course. Over the last few months, as we've seen revelation after revelation of very questionable law enforcement and data collection practices by the government, each time we're first told this is "no big deal" and then when the feds realize that no one's buying that, suddenly they need to "review" the program.

Gee... it's kind of like when they keep all this stuff totally secret, it doesn't receive the level of scrutiny that it really needs, huh?