13 ms·

AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

201 points by mikeevans 13y ago

joeldidit 13y ago
...yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, that's why. Not!
ryusage 13y ago
Interesting. At first glance, this feels wrong, but thinking about it more, the only significant issue I really have with it is that it seems strange for the DEA to be allowed to issue its own warrants.
- moens 13y ago
  ...and for there to be a war on drugs in the first place. Eliminate the fundamentals, and there should be no issues at all, really.
  - devx 13y ago
    Then there would be a war on piracy. How would you like it if they kept 20 years of your downloading habits? Do you think that in 20 years time they could find something to incriminate you? And that's why it's so wrong to keep data for so long, and actually be able to use it.
    - res0nat0r 13y ago
      I'm sure the statue of limitations would apply to many of these crimes, so you can't be convicted of downloading Game of Thrones in 20 years.
    - corncobpipe 13y ago
      I think that's going to be right around the corner.
  - btown 13y ago
    s/Drugs/Terror
    - aroman 13y ago
      So how exactly do we stop the terrorists from harming us, then? Send them a C&D?
      - mpyne 13y ago
        No dude, all we have to do is be nice to everybody, increase our foreign aid even further, and establish Shariah law within the U.S. Oh, and somehow ignore the First Amendment and ban American citizens from insulting certainly notable religious figures. Then they will surely leave us alone.
        aroman 13y ago
        I'm not sure why my answer merited either a down vote or a sarcastic response, but I regardless, you can work to minimize terrorism without destroying our rights and liberties. I'm not sure where you're drawing the false dichotomy from.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        You were probably downvoted because a "War on Terror" is not necessary to minimize terrorism. Nor, as you point out, does minimizing necessitate destroying our rights and liberties. "The War on..." is a phrase that signals to us that we should be on the lookout for crude solutions that do more harm than good. It is a crude phrase that perfectly embodies the simplistic attitude that inevitably backs whatever program the phrase is being used to describe. Wherever there is a "War on..." there is almost certainly something that we could be doing smarter, rather than harder.
        mpyne 13y ago
        I didn't downvote. I also didn't think I was being sarcastic, to you at least. I don't personally live under the false dichotomy that an unending "WAR ON TERROR" is required to suppress terrorism. But nor do I fall into the trope that the solution is to simply let anyone inflict any attack that they wish. As you say, it is possible to actually fight terrorism without destroying our rights and liberties, and I agree wholeheartedly.
  - genwin 13y ago
    I have a problem with a war on marijuana, or violating the Constitution during the war on drugs. But otherwise I don't have a problem with a war on meth or crack or other drugs that increase the odds that I'll be a victim of violent crime or robbery. (I'd punish simple users with rehab rather than prison.)
    - pstuart 13y ago
      No, no, no. Making them illegal makes more violent crime. Let me put you in rehab for your coffee addiction or beer habit, ok?
      - whyleyc 13y ago
        Except people don't violently mug strangers in broad daylight to get their next caffeine hit ... unless you haven't scored a coffee for a long time :)
        PavlovsCat 13y ago
        That's because caffeine is legal and therefore dirt cheap.
        whyleyc 13y ago
        No, it's because as a stimulant it has a combination of relatively low addictive properties and is easy to withdraw from when compared to more "hardcore" substances [1] [1] http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm
        jlgreco 13y ago
        All of those things, except "stimulant" technically, can be said of pot too. Hell, caffeine is physically addictive (not to even get into the lifestyles you can build around it that lead to less 'medical' forms of addiction...) while pot is not. You ever caffeine withdrawal? Yeah, during that week-long vacation last year when you stopped going to Starbucks every morning. Most of us have gone through that; it is a bitch and lasts longer than most hangovers. You ever get pot withdrawal? Yeah, me neither. Whatever, lets say for the sake of argument that pot and caffeine are on par with each other despite the obvious discrepancies. It is undeniable that pot prohibition is harmful to society; why would caffeine prohibition not be?
  - chris_mahan 13y ago
    Eliminating drug use mostly means eliminating mild depression (notwithstanding the medical uses of drugs), which mostly means giving people a reason to feel good about themselves and their future, which mostly mean providing an environment where they are free from oppression, constant surveillance, and a multitude of contradictory laws, along with good means of making money, which means education, positive work and life experiences, and a vibrant economy. Note that anything the individual is forced to do against their will without appropriate compensation is out of the question; such as bad schools, prison, and, dare I say it, American team sports? Yes some people are more prone to addictive behavior than others, and yes severe depression is a serious disease which must be handled by professionals. However, the malaise in America is not clinical depression: it's the lack of opportunity to learn, excel, and be rewarded for such excellence. Yes, this opportunity exists for many people, and many do take advantage of it, to great benefit. Many others, though, for a variety of reasons, lack that opportunity. It is generally these people who fuel demand for drugs, to escape the misery and blight of a dead-end future. These people are not losers, but people to whom the dealer of cards dealt a poor hand, and who have not been told by the media and their peers that no hand is a bad hand, that there are opportunity in adversity, that it is through failure that success comes. They, alas, believe that their lot is to suffer, then die, not having achieved anything worthwhile. So, in their desperation and utter loneliness, they seek a fleeting pleasure, a personal high, to momentarily drift away from the relentless and inexorable approach of Death. Do you wish them well? Do you seek to help them? Change yourself. Show them by the example of your own life that adversity can be overcome. Show them by the kindness in your speech, by your countenance, by your actions, that they are not ostracized from human society, but rather, as fallen and wounded, deserve further aid, further care from the rest of us. Or do you wish them away? To be put in prison and removed from your neighborhood, your city? Do you blame them for the poor choices they have made? In their lack of ability, they fell, and unable to stand, they stayed down. Are they weak, ill-fitted for society, and perhaps their premature death at the hand of violence, poverty, and the lawman, is the just reward for their inability to thrive in the Modern Age? As I see children in the playground at my son's elementary school, I see them all alike: full of joy, vitality, and wonder. As children, we too were alike. Then life happened. For some, with privilege and wealth, to great achievements; and for others, with violence and meanness, to suffering and loneliness.
- axus 13y ago
  Somehow I doubt the database detailing the history of subpoenas is as accurate as the one containing all the phone records. Is there anything like the FISA court for these subpoenas? I couldn't find any kind of checks on their power.
  - socillion 13y ago
    The DEA uses "administrative subpoenas", which they are allowed to unilaterally issue for anything relevant to an investigation. Here's an older article on them: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/administrative-subpoenas/all/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/administrative-subp...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
aet 13y ago
Burner phones?
- jacobquick 13y ago
  They call non-smartphones 'feature phones' and unlike 3g network phones, they all have gps as part of the CDR. LTE has it as well, only 3g doesn't. 3g network stuff uses old PPoE because phone companies are lazy.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    You're saying every low-end phone has GPS active, then gets and transmits a fix for every phone call?
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Even without GPS, the cell phone position can often be triangulated by the tower itself. That even has a compelling public safety justification (911 calls) so it wouldn't surprise me if phone companies were already doing that as a matter of course.
      - lutusp 13y ago
        > Even without GPS, the cell phone position can often be triangulated by the tower itself. Towers, not tower. With two towers receiving a cell phone's signal, the phone can be located along a line, with three towers, it can be located as a point -- not as accurate as GPS, but reasonably accurate. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jp...
        peterwwillis 13y ago
        Or if you have a van and work with Verizon Wireless, once you know its general location near one tower, you can drive around with a high-powered femtocell, hijack the phone's tower connection and close in on its exact location. If you're a GSM user you don't need to update the phone's PRL list to hijack its tower connection, so you could do something similar yourself with an OpenBTS setup (though without the tower information to correlate, you'd be doing a lot more driving) http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-aircard/all/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-a...
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
So AT&T kept records for 26 years and counting. Information that includes location of caller. I am very happy drug dealers were caught, but 26 years? There is some serious potential for abuse.
- jacobquick 13y ago
  I was at a different telecom a couple years back and legal handed down a ruling that we couldn't keep things beyond two years, even though we were research instead of billing. Research was the last group at the company to have to delete all that stuff, and we only had space for five years anyway, and even that was stripped down to 10% of its original data. However the researchers felt very safe in assuming that since the government has all of the data reflected off the antenna base station switches through its own network, there's no way they're deleting anything. It's weird that at&t had to give them that data, unless you assume that up til now they had access to the nsa's copy and now the justice department says they have to have their own.
- TrainedMonkey 13y ago
  Just read article in depth and found two more significant "features". First one - database build by AT&T can identify if target individual uses multiple phones (So if say I was engineer Joe and wanted to get sell private cell number(s) for Angelina Jolie how much would you pay?). Second - they can identify if you switched to a new number. Even if you threw out your phone. (So speaking of numbers, how much would you pay for a yearly subscription previously offered 'product'). Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no reason to believe that other providers do not.
  - metageek 13y ago
    >Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no reason to believe that other providers do not. The article says AT&T has the data for any telco that uses AT&T switches. This is a little odd, given that the company currently known as AT&T is not the same company that used to manufacture switches; but, if this has been going on for 26 years, I suppose the government would have insisted it continue across corporate splits and mergers.
joering2 13y ago
Interesting to note here is that the ATT _gave_ those records "on its own", versus being subpoena via DEA by a judge, something that 99% of judges in their sound mind would have never ever ever agreed on, even in today's world. I had a hard time believing that ATT would have done something like this out of their own free will, as they would have never done anything that could undermine their sales and bottom line (potentially) so severely. I put "on its own" in quotes because knowing the way Government thugs are conducting themselves, most likely the ATT had been heavily blackmailed under the table this or another way and at some point they have given up (Wikipedia: tyranny). Don't be surprised if in couple of years from now the administration will change, and the management of ATT will change, and then you will see some tiny PR-lawsuit surfacing that yes indeed ATT were pushed by DEA and now they are "suing".
- jivatmanx 13y ago
  The Telecoms have long given total cooperation in exchange for monopoly privileges in cable and internet. Carrot before stick.
- hga 13y ago
  Better, Wikipedia a former Qwest (US West/Mountain States T&T, Northwestern Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell) CEO, Joseph Nacchio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio#Qwest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio#Qwest
- smsm42 13y ago
  I wouldn't be so sure AT&T didn't do it entirely on its own. In our crony capitalism times, being friends with the Big Government is a very good strategy for Big Business. Lobbying is the most profitable investment known to man. If giving records to DEA means access to juicy government contracts or a nice regulation that ensures the interests of AT&T are properly protected - then bottom line comes out nicely. That provided anybody besides a handful of geeks would actually care - after all, you'd never do something as vile and disgusting as sell merchandise that the government does not approve, right? So you have nothing to fear and there's no reason for concern at all.
mrinterweb 13y ago
So assuming worst case scenario that the DEA actually was able to make a whole bunch of arrests based on this historical data, would we really want to pay to jail that many more inmates? What could be the point of this?
- samstave 13y ago
  >would we really want to pay to jail that many more inmates This implies you have any choice in the matter. Its starkly obvious these days the actual relationship between the US "citizenry" and their government.
- genwin 13y ago
  The point could be private prisons and the lobbying $$$$ they funnel to politicians.
- diydsp 13y ago
  Pressure against individuals: To put pressure on people to get them to do your bidding. To compel people to turn up evidence on bigger fish or your family members. To compel someone to be a patsy for a different crime. To compel celebrities to come out in support of the security state. Nationally (or bragging rights): To look good to other countries when we ask for loans ("we're a secure nation- we could arrest all of these people if we wanted to."). To negotiate with prison-building companies (untapped arrests are potential prisons). To compel additional budgeting for high-tech crime-fighting research and equipment. To inflate one party's credibility pre-election ("we turned up all these bad guys."). As bargaining tokens in international deals ("we'll turn in this bad guy of yours if you buy our $million radar"). To bolster Big Pharma's stance that mass-narcotics are necessary ("look how many people self-medicate with dangerous cannabis, they should be taking prozac instead.").
  - mrinterweb 13y ago
    Yikes. I prefer to think that the government would not be that evil, but then again, that's just me choosing ignorance/optimism over thinking about how bad things could actually be.
w0rd-driven 13y ago
Now it makes me wonder what the turnover rate will be once all those drug dealers learn that AT&T is bad for their business. I wonder if anyone is even measuring those stats to know. This is by far not free and I really wonder what AT&T is getting out of the deal. They're devoting a small but significant amount of internal resources for what? Does the DEA overlook their transgressions or just the CEO? I have a hard time believing that AT&T would do this "out of the kindness of their hearts." I wonder now that this is exposed and the real costs of this project will come to bare if they'll keep it up. They certainly have enough money to throw at it, though.
- wmf 13y ago
  I would assume that the DEA is paying AT&T whatever they ask, so it's hardly charity. (I wonder if AT&T tacks on mystery fees to the government like they do with consumers.)
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  A: The information AT&T is handing over covers far more than just their own subscribers. They're also providing wholesale information, so even if you're not an AT&T subscriber, your provider might eventually buy from AT&T, and they'll get the call detail record for some of your calls anyways. B: Is it known that the other major providers are not in on this just like AT&T?
  - kordless 13y ago
    And moreover, calls to non-AT&T mobile users are in there. That means you are in there if someone called you from AT&T and/or you called them on AT&T. With a bit of legwork, you could reasonably infer phone number changes on non-AT&T networks given the same people on AT&T and you kept calling each other after your number change.
jivatmanx 13y ago
This, the Parallel Construction story, and the Patriot act having been principally used for the War on Drugs than terror... has made me consider that the War on Drugs may actually be more dangerous to Liberty than the war on terror. No doubt it's basic premise, that putting a substance into one's own body is a "crime", is a pernicious lie. The War on Terror's pernicious lie is twofold: Terrorism isn't a crime, and thus isn't subject to any laws, that this war is eternal, and the whole world is a battlefield. Certainly in practical effects the Drug war is worse: Minorities whose communities are regularly raided by soldiers, depopulated, and placed into our glorious, humane prison system with the highest incarceration rate in the world, than stripped of voting rights and essentially blackballed from employment afterwards, would think surely so... My natural tendency has so far been to see the war on Terror as worse, this may be me I, like many HNers with dissident political opinions, am more likely to see myself as an actual target in the War on Terror. That, and being an Orwell fan...
- detcader 13y ago
  Read "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander and then start reading up on the history of civil rights activism and the beginning of the war on drugs
- tel 13y ago
  You can also take a look at the worldwide impact it's had through empowering Colombian cartels for instance.
- sharkweek 13y ago
  The Economist rants on this every couple of months, and I couldn't agree more. The war on drugs is a terrible misstep. Drugs should never have been a criminal issue, they should be strictly a public health issue. But we're far too entrenched to make that change now. Watch "The House I Live In" (streaming on Netflix) for a ridiculously detailed picture of the problem
  - csmatt 13y ago
    "The House I Live In" was an eye opener for me. Also, one of the directors, David Simon, is the creator of the HBO show 'The Wire' which dealt heavily with the side effects of the war on drugs. 'The Wire' is the first thing I thought of when reading about this story.
rdl 13y ago
I think a total boycott of ATT would be a good start, since it appears ATT actually was out in front of Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint on this. I'd probably trust T-Mobile and Sprint more than either ATT or Sprint based on corporate history, too. Still totally untrustworthy, but there probably is a difference. It's getting to the point where a good alternative to how cellphones work might be worthwhile, to keep location data more confidential. A broadcast "ping", and then some form of tunneled return connection, rather than routine registration with location. Doing it all in a way which doesn't touch PSTN and thus doesn't call under a sane interpretation of CALEA, plus a provider willing to challenge the constitutionality of CALEA and at minimum require full warrants for all cooperation, probably would be a good deal better, too.
- qwerty_asdf 13y ago
  Good luck. How do you boycott a backbone network provider thatmay ultimately service your chosen ISP anyway? Sure, you harm their consumer and residential retail operations, but that won't cripple their business to business operations, which is where all the real money is anyway.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    Mesh networks?
    - zackmorris 13y ago
      I wish Hacker News had a wiki somewhere listing the most promising solutions to the top issues hackers care about. So like, best off-the-shelf mesh network hardware, best form of encryption, best $5 microcontroller with usb and/or bluetooth and or wifi, stuff like that. If I could just get these things cheaply and easily, I would gladly use them. Right now so many of them seem more experimental than ubiquitous.
      - dllthomas 13y ago
        I'm actually not convinced, myself, that they're practical at present (I know that anyone is doing anything with them in the real world, so it's not 100% theoretical, but not the extent or the difficulty or the capabilities...). Which is to say, I'd also very much like to see such a consolidation of resources.
tsotha 13y ago
It doesn't surprise me the government would be able to find people swapping out phones on a regular basis using this data. I once worked in the fraud department of a major US mobile carrier. At that time analog was on its last legs, and the new money-making opportunity was bog-standard identity theft. People would sign up for new phones using stolen information and then rent out minutes to immigrants from the back of a van until we found them out and shut down the phone. We had a system that "fingerprinted" usage patterns such that we knew with a fair degree of certainty when a new account was fraudulent based on his usage patters and the people he called. I don't see any reason why the same technology wouldn't work to identify criminals with boxes full of prepaid phones.
asn0 13y ago
DEAT&T would have dominated the FTC RoboCall Challenge http://robocall.challenge.gov/ http://robocall.challenge.gov/ if they would have entered. $50K to boot. When a phone spammer uses fake Caller IDs, the FTC would subpoena the records through DEAT&T to find out the real caller, then $fine$ them into oblivion. Actually, AT&T should offer a service "WhoReallyJustCalledMe" so I can track down and sue the spammers myself. I'd even pay a % of my winnings.
quahada 13y ago
This "dropped phone" search in interesting. This could be the most dangerous aspect of this program. Chances are little scientific research was done on the accuracy. What is the false positive rate? Are there policies and procedures in place to determine if the phones actually matched the individual? This can't be done without the voice data. Are the analysts savvy enough about the limitation of the underlying algorithms? If these questions have not been addressed, it's possible innocent people have been prosecuted.
shawn-furyan 13y ago
As a meta-commentary on this category of issues, I tend to be against these sort of substance bans (PEDs[1] in sports is another timely example), and I often see that people who support such measures tend to talk about what things would be like if these substances were completely gotten rid of[2]. To me, this is complete fantasy because there's never been a substance ban that has been very effective at reducing usage of a popular substance, instead such bans simply create black markets out of open markets. But when there's this idea, mostly but not exclusively on the pro-criminalization side, that we can completely stamp out markets where there is inelastic demand through bans/criminalization and enforcement, then you get justifications for more and more extreme measures from the enforcement side. In reality though, we tend to see hugely diminishing returns accompanying these measures, and the numbers in the article demonstrate these diminishing returns well (i.e. the program is incredibly broad, yet the spoils being bragged about are incredibly paltry compared to the size of the related markets). The assumption that bans/criminalization can significantly reduce demand for substances with inelastic demand is completely unreasonable given the track record of such measures. For example, demand for PEDs in professional sports is particularly inelastic because the rewards for even marginal increases in performance are so high and the penalties are so rare and low as to easily be subsidized by the increased salary resulting from use of PEDs, not to mention the cognitive and social biases that favor optimizing short-term over long-term performance. In discussing such issues, I think that actual outcomes of previous and current banning/criminalization policies has to start being favored as the baseline effect of future policies rather than this pie in the sky idea that these sort of policies can have at or near 100% efficacy. Then perhaps we can move on from the inane moralizing that tends to accompany such discussions to a point where we can have results oriented discourse grounded in reality on these topics. [1]Performance Enhancing Drugs, actually used more broadly to label all performance enhancing substances including human hormones and blood oxygenation. [2]this really isn't a straw man, I've been involved in a few discussions in the last couple months in which the ban/criminalization proponents (about 4 or so different people) were arguing their position from the assumption that bans/criminalization can lead to reduction of substance usage to negligible levels. [edited to fix formatting and to clarify footnote 1]
- api 13y ago
  Depending on the drug, are you sure you'd even want them completely gotten rid of? Ban psychedelics and you'd have a lot less good music and art.
ballard 13y ago
One readily inferred tip on changing burner phones is to physically change locations* before using a new one (battery removed when not making/expecting a call, of course). * Say the tube at rush hour.

201 points by mikeevans 13y ago

...yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, that's why. Not!

Interesting. At first glance, this feels wrong, but thinking about it more, the only significant issue I really have with it is that it seems strange for the DEA to be allowed to issue its own warrants.

moens 13y ago
...and for there to be a war on drugs in the first place. Eliminate the fundamentals, and there should be no issues at all, really.
- devx 13y ago
  Then there would be a war on piracy. How would you like it if they kept 20 years of your downloading habits? Do you think that in 20 years time they could find something to incriminate you? And that's why it's so wrong to keep data for so long, and actually be able to use it.
  - res0nat0r 13y ago
    I'm sure the statue of limitations would apply to many of these crimes, so you can't be convicted of downloading Game of Thrones in 20 years.
  - corncobpipe 13y ago
    I think that's going to be right around the corner.
- btown 13y ago
  s/Drugs/Terror
  - aroman 13y ago
    So how exactly do we stop the terrorists from harming us, then? Send them a C&D?
    - mpyne 13y ago
      No dude, all we have to do is be nice to everybody, increase our foreign aid even further, and establish Shariah law within the U.S. Oh, and somehow ignore the First Amendment and ban American citizens from insulting certainly notable religious figures. Then they will surely leave us alone.
      - aroman 13y ago
        I'm not sure why my answer merited either a down vote or a sarcastic response, but I regardless, you can work to minimize terrorism without destroying our rights and liberties. I'm not sure where you're drawing the false dichotomy from.
        jlgreco 13y ago
        You were probably downvoted because a "War on Terror" is not necessary to minimize terrorism. Nor, as you point out, does minimizing necessitate destroying our rights and liberties. "The War on..." is a phrase that signals to us that we should be on the lookout for crude solutions that do more harm than good. It is a crude phrase that perfectly embodies the simplistic attitude that inevitably backs whatever program the phrase is being used to describe. Wherever there is a "War on..." there is almost certainly something that we could be doing smarter, rather than harder.
        mpyne 13y ago
        I didn't downvote. I also didn't think I was being sarcastic, to you at least. I don't personally live under the false dichotomy that an unending "WAR ON TERROR" is required to suppress terrorism. But nor do I fall into the trope that the solution is to simply let anyone inflict any attack that they wish. As you say, it is possible to actually fight terrorism without destroying our rights and liberties, and I agree wholeheartedly.
- genwin 13y ago
  I have a problem with a war on marijuana, or violating the Constitution during the war on drugs. But otherwise I don't have a problem with a war on meth or crack or other drugs that increase the odds that I'll be a victim of violent crime or robbery. (I'd punish simple users with rehab rather than prison.)
  - pstuart 13y ago
    No, no, no. Making them illegal makes more violent crime. Let me put you in rehab for your coffee addiction or beer habit, ok?
    - whyleyc 13y ago
      Except people don't violently mug strangers in broad daylight to get their next caffeine hit ... unless you haven't scored a coffee for a long time :)
      - PavlovsCat 13y ago
        That's because caffeine is legal and therefore dirt cheap.
        whyleyc 13y ago
        No, it's because as a stimulant it has a combination of relatively low addictive properties and is easy to withdraw from when compared to more "hardcore" substances [1] [1] http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm
        jlgreco 13y ago
        All of those things, except "stimulant" technically, can be said of pot too. Hell, caffeine is physically addictive (not to even get into the lifestyles you can build around it that lead to less 'medical' forms of addiction...) while pot is not. You ever caffeine withdrawal? Yeah, during that week-long vacation last year when you stopped going to Starbucks every morning. Most of us have gone through that; it is a bitch and lasts longer than most hangovers. You ever get pot withdrawal? Yeah, me neither. Whatever, lets say for the sake of argument that pot and caffeine are on par with each other despite the obvious discrepancies. It is undeniable that pot prohibition is harmful to society; why would caffeine prohibition not be?
- chris_mahan 13y ago
  Eliminating drug use mostly means eliminating mild depression (notwithstanding the medical uses of drugs), which mostly means giving people a reason to feel good about themselves and their future, which mostly mean providing an environment where they are free from oppression, constant surveillance, and a multitude of contradictory laws, along with good means of making money, which means education, positive work and life experiences, and a vibrant economy. Note that anything the individual is forced to do against their will without appropriate compensation is out of the question; such as bad schools, prison, and, dare I say it, American team sports? Yes some people are more prone to addictive behavior than others, and yes severe depression is a serious disease which must be handled by professionals. However, the malaise in America is not clinical depression: it's the lack of opportunity to learn, excel, and be rewarded for such excellence. Yes, this opportunity exists for many people, and many do take advantage of it, to great benefit. Many others, though, for a variety of reasons, lack that opportunity. It is generally these people who fuel demand for drugs, to escape the misery and blight of a dead-end future. These people are not losers, but people to whom the dealer of cards dealt a poor hand, and who have not been told by the media and their peers that no hand is a bad hand, that there are opportunity in adversity, that it is through failure that success comes. They, alas, believe that their lot is to suffer, then die, not having achieved anything worthwhile. So, in their desperation and utter loneliness, they seek a fleeting pleasure, a personal high, to momentarily drift away from the relentless and inexorable approach of Death. Do you wish them well? Do you seek to help them? Change yourself. Show them by the example of your own life that adversity can be overcome. Show them by the kindness in your speech, by your countenance, by your actions, that they are not ostracized from human society, but rather, as fallen and wounded, deserve further aid, further care from the rest of us. Or do you wish them away? To be put in prison and removed from your neighborhood, your city? Do you blame them for the poor choices they have made? In their lack of ability, they fell, and unable to stand, they stayed down. Are they weak, ill-fitted for society, and perhaps their premature death at the hand of violence, poverty, and the lawman, is the just reward for their inability to thrive in the Modern Age? As I see children in the playground at my son's elementary school, I see them all alike: full of joy, vitality, and wonder. As children, we too were alike. Then life happened. For some, with privilege and wealth, to great achievements; and for others, with violence and meanness, to suffering and loneliness.
axus 13y ago
Somehow I doubt the database detailing the history of subpoenas is as accurate as the one containing all the phone records. Is there anything like the FISA court for these subpoenas? I couldn't find any kind of checks on their power.
- socillion 13y ago
  The DEA uses "administrative subpoenas", which they are allowed to unilaterally issue for anything relevant to an investigation. Here's an older article on them: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/administrative-subpoenas/all/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/administrative-subp...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

aet 13y ago

Burner phones?

jacobquick 13y ago
They call non-smartphones 'feature phones' and unlike 3g network phones, they all have gps as part of the CDR. LTE has it as well, only 3g doesn't. 3g network stuff uses old PPoE because phone companies are lazy.
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  You're saying every low-end phone has GPS active, then gets and transmits a fix for every phone call?
  - mpyne 13y ago
    Even without GPS, the cell phone position can often be triangulated by the tower itself. That even has a compelling public safety justification (911 calls) so it wouldn't surprise me if phone companies were already doing that as a matter of course.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > Even without GPS, the cell phone position can often be triangulated by the tower itself. Towers, not tower. With two towers receiving a cell phone's signal, the phone can be located along a line, with three towers, it can be located as a point -- not as accurate as GPS, but reasonably accurate. http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jp...
      - peterwwillis 13y ago
        Or if you have a van and work with Verizon Wireless, once you know its general location near one tower, you can drive around with a high-powered femtocell, hijack the phone's tower connection and close in on its exact location. If you're a GSM user you don't need to update the phone's PRL list to hijack its tower connection, so you could do something similar yourself with an OpenBTS setup (though without the tower information to correlate, you'd be doing a lot more driving) http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-aircard/all/ http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/verizon-rigmaiden-a...

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

So AT&T kept records for 26 years and counting. Information that includes location of caller. I am very happy drug dealers were caught, but 26 years? There is some serious potential for abuse.

jacobquick 13y ago
I was at a different telecom a couple years back and legal handed down a ruling that we couldn't keep things beyond two years, even though we were research instead of billing. Research was the last group at the company to have to delete all that stuff, and we only had space for five years anyway, and even that was stripped down to 10% of its original data. However the researchers felt very safe in assuming that since the government has all of the data reflected off the antenna base station switches through its own network, there's no way they're deleting anything. It's weird that at&t had to give them that data, unless you assume that up til now they had access to the nsa's copy and now the justice department says they have to have their own.
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
Just read article in depth and found two more significant "features". First one - database build by AT&T can identify if target individual uses multiple phones (So if say I was engineer Joe and wanted to get sell private cell number(s) for Angelina Jolie how much would you pay?). Second - they can identify if you switched to a new number. Even if you threw out your phone. (So speaking of numbers, how much would you pay for a yearly subscription previously offered 'product'). Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no reason to believe that other providers do not.
- metageek 13y ago
  >Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no reason to believe that other providers do not. The article says AT&T has the data for any telco that uses AT&T switches. This is a little odd, given that the company currently known as AT&T is not the same company that used to manufacture switches; but, if this has been going on for 26 years, I suppose the government would have insisted it continue across corporate splits and mergers.

joering2 13y ago

Interesting to note here is that the ATT _gave_ those records "on its own", versus being subpoena via DEA by a judge, something that 99% of judges in their sound mind would have never ever ever agreed on, even in today's world. I had a hard time believing that ATT would have done something like this out of their own free will, as they would have never done anything that could undermine their sales and bottom line (potentially) so severely. I put "on its own" in quotes because knowing the way Government thugs are conducting themselves, most likely the ATT had been heavily blackmailed under the table this or another way and at some point they have given up (Wikipedia: tyranny). Don't be surprised if in couple of years from now the administration will change, and the management of ATT will change, and then you will see some tiny PR-lawsuit surfacing that yes indeed ATT were pushed by DEA and now they are "suing".

jivatmanx 13y ago
The Telecoms have long given total cooperation in exchange for monopoly privileges in cable and internet. Carrot before stick.
hga 13y ago
Better, Wikipedia a former Qwest (US West/Mountain States T&T, Northwestern Bell, Pacific Northwest Bell) CEO, Joseph Nacchio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio#Qwest https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio#Qwest
smsm42 13y ago
I wouldn't be so sure AT&T didn't do it entirely on its own. In our crony capitalism times, being friends with the Big Government is a very good strategy for Big Business. Lobbying is the most profitable investment known to man. If giving records to DEA means access to juicy government contracts or a nice regulation that ensures the interests of AT&T are properly protected - then bottom line comes out nicely. That provided anybody besides a handful of geeks would actually care - after all, you'd never do something as vile and disgusting as sell merchandise that the government does not approve, right? So you have nothing to fear and there's no reason for concern at all.

mrinterweb 13y ago

So assuming worst case scenario that the DEA actually was able to make a whole bunch of arrests based on this historical data, would we really want to pay to jail that many more inmates? What could be the point of this?

samstave 13y ago
>would we really want to pay to jail that many more inmates This implies you have any choice in the matter. Its starkly obvious these days the actual relationship between the US "citizenry" and their government.
genwin 13y ago
The point could be private prisons and the lobbying $$$$ they funnel to politicians.
diydsp 13y ago
Pressure against individuals: To put pressure on people to get them to do your bidding. To compel people to turn up evidence on bigger fish or your family members. To compel someone to be a patsy for a different crime. To compel celebrities to come out in support of the security state. Nationally (or bragging rights): To look good to other countries when we ask for loans ("we're a secure nation- we could arrest all of these people if we wanted to."). To negotiate with prison-building companies (untapped arrests are potential prisons). To compel additional budgeting for high-tech crime-fighting research and equipment. To inflate one party's credibility pre-election ("we turned up all these bad guys."). As bargaining tokens in international deals ("we'll turn in this bad guy of yours if you buy our $million radar"). To bolster Big Pharma's stance that mass-narcotics are necessary ("look how many people self-medicate with dangerous cannabis, they should be taking prozac instead.").
- mrinterweb 13y ago
  Yikes. I prefer to think that the government would not be that evil, but then again, that's just me choosing ignorance/optimism over thinking about how bad things could actually be.

w0rd-driven 13y ago

Now it makes me wonder what the turnover rate will be once all those drug dealers learn that AT&T is bad for their business. I wonder if anyone is even measuring those stats to know. This is by far not free and I really wonder what AT&T is getting out of the deal. They're devoting a small but significant amount of internal resources for what? Does the DEA overlook their transgressions or just the CEO? I have a hard time believing that AT&T would do this "out of the kindness of their hearts." I wonder now that this is exposed and the real costs of this project will come to bare if they'll keep it up. They certainly have enough money to throw at it, though.

wmf 13y ago
I would assume that the DEA is paying AT&T whatever they ask, so it's hardly charity. (I wonder if AT&T tacks on mystery fees to the government like they do with consumers.)
MichaelGG 13y ago
A: The information AT&T is handing over covers far more than just their own subscribers. They're also providing wholesale information, so even if you're not an AT&T subscriber, your provider might eventually buy from AT&T, and they'll get the call detail record for some of your calls anyways. B: Is it known that the other major providers are not in on this just like AT&T?
- kordless 13y ago
  And moreover, calls to non-AT&T mobile users are in there. That means you are in there if someone called you from AT&T and/or you called them on AT&T. With a bit of legwork, you could reasonably infer phone number changes on non-AT&T networks given the same people on AT&T and you kept calling each other after your number change.

jivatmanx 13y ago

This, the Parallel Construction story, and the Patriot act having been principally used for the War on Drugs than terror... has made me consider that the War on Drugs may actually be more dangerous to Liberty than the war on terror. No doubt it's basic premise, that putting a substance into one's own body is a "crime", is a pernicious lie. The War on Terror's pernicious lie is twofold: Terrorism isn't a crime, and thus isn't subject to any laws, that this war is eternal, and the whole world is a battlefield. Certainly in practical effects the Drug war is worse: Minorities whose communities are regularly raided by soldiers, depopulated, and placed into our glorious, humane prison system with the highest incarceration rate in the world, than stripped of voting rights and essentially blackballed from employment afterwards, would think surely so... My natural tendency has so far been to see the war on Terror as worse, this may be me I, like many HNers with dissident political opinions, am more likely to see myself as an actual target in the War on Terror. That, and being an Orwell fan...

detcader 13y ago
Read "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander and then start reading up on the history of civil rights activism and the beginning of the war on drugs
tel 13y ago
You can also take a look at the worldwide impact it's had through empowering Colombian cartels for instance.
sharkweek 13y ago
The Economist rants on this every couple of months, and I couldn't agree more. The war on drugs is a terrible misstep. Drugs should never have been a criminal issue, they should be strictly a public health issue. But we're far too entrenched to make that change now. Watch "The House I Live In" (streaming on Netflix) for a ridiculously detailed picture of the problem
- csmatt 13y ago
  "The House I Live In" was an eye opener for me. Also, one of the directors, David Simon, is the creator of the HBO show 'The Wire' which dealt heavily with the side effects of the war on drugs. 'The Wire' is the first thing I thought of when reading about this story.

rdl 13y ago

I think a total boycott of ATT would be a good start, since it appears ATT actually was out in front of Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint on this. I'd probably trust T-Mobile and Sprint more than either ATT or Sprint based on corporate history, too. Still totally untrustworthy, but there probably is a difference. It's getting to the point where a good alternative to how cellphones work might be worthwhile, to keep location data more confidential. A broadcast "ping", and then some form of tunneled return connection, rather than routine registration with location. Doing it all in a way which doesn't touch PSTN and thus doesn't call under a sane interpretation of CALEA, plus a provider willing to challenge the constitutionality of CALEA and at minimum require full warrants for all cooperation, probably would be a good deal better, too.

qwerty_asdf 13y ago
Good luck. How do you boycott a backbone network provider thatmay ultimately service your chosen ISP anyway? Sure, you harm their consumer and residential retail operations, but that won't cripple their business to business operations, which is where all the real money is anyway.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Mesh networks?
  - zackmorris 13y ago
    I wish Hacker News had a wiki somewhere listing the most promising solutions to the top issues hackers care about. So like, best off-the-shelf mesh network hardware, best form of encryption, best $5 microcontroller with usb and/or bluetooth and or wifi, stuff like that. If I could just get these things cheaply and easily, I would gladly use them. Right now so many of them seem more experimental than ubiquitous.
    - dllthomas 13y ago
      I'm actually not convinced, myself, that they're practical at present (I know that anyone is doing anything with them in the real world, so it's not 100% theoretical, but not the extent or the difficulty or the capabilities...). Which is to say, I'd also very much like to see such a consolidation of resources.

tsotha 13y ago

It doesn't surprise me the government would be able to find people swapping out phones on a regular basis using this data. I once worked in the fraud department of a major US mobile carrier. At that time analog was on its last legs, and the new money-making opportunity was bog-standard identity theft. People would sign up for new phones using stolen information and then rent out minutes to immigrants from the back of a van until we found them out and shut down the phone. We had a system that "fingerprinted" usage patterns such that we knew with a fair degree of certainty when a new account was fraudulent based on his usage patters and the people he called. I don't see any reason why the same technology wouldn't work to identify criminals with boxes full of prepaid phones.

asn0 13y ago

DEAT&T would have dominated the FTC RoboCall Challenge http://robocall.challenge.gov/ http://robocall.challenge.gov/ if they would have entered. $50K to boot. When a phone spammer uses fake Caller IDs, the FTC would subpoena the records through DEAT&T to find out the real caller, then $fine$ them into oblivion. Actually, AT&T should offer a service "WhoReallyJustCalledMe" so I can track down and sue the spammers myself. I'd even pay a % of my winnings.

quahada 13y ago

This "dropped phone" search in interesting. This could be the most dangerous aspect of this program. Chances are little scientific research was done on the accuracy. What is the false positive rate? Are there policies and procedures in place to determine if the phones actually matched the individual? This can't be done without the voice data. Are the analysts savvy enough about the limitation of the underlying algorithms? If these questions have not been addressed, it's possible innocent people have been prosecuted.

shawn-furyan 13y ago

As a meta-commentary on this category of issues, I tend to be against these sort of substance bans (PEDs[1] in sports is another timely example), and I often see that people who support such measures tend to talk about what things would be like if these substances were completely gotten rid of[2]. To me, this is complete fantasy because there's never been a substance ban that has been very effective at reducing usage of a popular substance, instead such bans simply create black markets out of open markets. But when there's this idea, mostly but not exclusively on the pro-criminalization side, that we can completely stamp out markets where there is inelastic demand through bans/criminalization and enforcement, then you get justifications for more and more extreme measures from the enforcement side. In reality though, we tend to see hugely diminishing returns accompanying these measures, and the numbers in the article demonstrate these diminishing returns well (i.e. the program is incredibly broad, yet the spoils being bragged about are incredibly paltry compared to the size of the related markets). The assumption that bans/criminalization can significantly reduce demand for substances with inelastic demand is completely unreasonable given the track record of such measures. For example, demand for PEDs in professional sports is particularly inelastic because the rewards for even marginal increases in performance are so high and the penalties are so rare and low as to easily be subsidized by the increased salary resulting from use of PEDs, not to mention the cognitive and social biases that favor optimizing short-term over long-term performance. In discussing such issues, I think that actual outcomes of previous and current banning/criminalization policies has to start being favored as the baseline effect of future policies rather than this pie in the sky idea that these sort of policies can have at or near 100% efficacy. Then perhaps we can move on from the inane moralizing that tends to accompany such discussions to a point where we can have results oriented discourse grounded in reality on these topics. [1]Performance Enhancing Drugs, actually used more broadly to label all performance enhancing substances including human hormones and blood oxygenation. [2]this really isn't a straw man, I've been involved in a few discussions in the last couple months in which the ban/criminalization proponents (about 4 or so different people) were arguing their position from the assumption that bans/criminalization can lead to reduction of substance usage to negligible levels. [edited to fix formatting and to clarify footnote 1]

api 13y ago
Depending on the drug, are you sure you'd even want them completely gotten rid of? Ban psychedelics and you'd have a lot less good music and art.

ballard 13y ago

One readily inferred tip on changing burner phones is to physically change locations* before using a new one (battery removed when not making/expecting a call, of course). * Say the tube at rush hour.