7 ms·

Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

199 points by jakewalker 12y ago

yuvadam 12y ago
Can someone pleas provide further context for this doc?
- sirn 12y ago
  EFF also posted this link alongside with the PDF in their Twitter: http://truth-out.org/news/item/26159-local-and-state-police-involved-in-sensitive-hemisphere-program http://truth-out.org/news/item/26159-local-and-state-police-...
- Theodores 12y ago
  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph... In the mainstream media, no less. Here is the 'powerpoint': http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/782287/database.pdf http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/782287/database.pdf You have nothing to hide...
- lambda 12y ago
  Here's some more information: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-amicus-brief-urges-court-order-criminal-discovery-surveillance-programs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-amicus-brief-urges...
appleflaxen 12y ago
It chills me to the core when the legal system needs to shield itself from the citizenry.
NotAtWork 12y ago
The simple truth is this: Anyone who supports the war on drugs as it is currently being run has abandoned what the US stood for at its founding regarding liberty, freedom, and the rule of law.
- kavabean 12y ago
  I agree with the main thrust of your comment but perpetuating the 'immaculate conception' myth of the US as a government of, for, and by the people is counterproductive. In particular the war on drugs absolutely goes against the ideas 'espoused' at that time. But that still holds. Ask any senator what America stands for and they will say something like "liberty, freedom, and justice for all". That doesn't mean it is what they work for in the background. Even while framing the constitution the controlling landowners of the US, i.e. the "US", were aware of the internal enemy that needed to be controlled. "The framers of the constitution made the determination that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent" http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm Where the "opulent" are the class from which the framers originated. This is not a new development.
  - NotAtWork 12y ago
    > makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to insure that the government will, in his words "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform My point wasn't that this didn't happen or the US was some magical egalitarian wonderland (though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods). Rather, my point was the manner in which they did this was to construct a system of law that protected the private individual from the instruments of government, and that we're slowly undoing that precise social contract - not stealing their wealth in exchange for restraint on government powers. It's hard to argue even though the founding of the US wasn't perfect, and that these instruments largely came about as a protection for the wealthy, that it didn't significantly raise the profile of the citizen-as-having-rights-to-be-protected form of government or that the US doesn't have a long history of viewing such policies as important, even if there have been historic violations. I think you'd even have trouble finding periods similar to the 50-70 year long ratcheting we've seen meant to undermine those exact same rights, or that their infringement has crept so far up the social ladder.
    - 12y ago
salmonellaeater 12y ago
It's chilling that they explicitly mention parallel construction on page 12: When a complete set of CDRs are subpoenaed from the carrier, then all memorialized references to relevant and pertinent calls can be attributed to the carrier's records, thus "walling off" the information obtained from Hemisphere. In other words, Hemisphere can easily be protected if it is used as a pointer system to uncover relevant numbers.
- jamesk_au 12y ago
  The notion of "walling off" information apparently also extends to court testimony and the prosecution brief: "However, when the mention of Hemisphere data in official documentation or court testimony is unavoidable ... Hemisphere analysts might advise the investigator on issues such as report writing, presentation to the prosecutor, and the trial phase." (p14) Just extraordinary.
- gojomo 12y ago
  Paralleled is even used as a verb near the bottom of page 10.
- CamperBob2 12y ago
  Here's the deal. If you work for an agency like the NSA or ONDCP as either a contractor or a full-time employee, and you're aware of a program like this, and you do not act to disclose it to the press and/or subvert it, then... Hell, I'm not even going to finish that thought. If I do, it will seem redundant to someone with a conscience, and legally actionable otherwise.
  - malandrew 12y ago
    ... you're not upholding the Constitution of the United States, which you took and oath to defend. The oath to protect the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic should take precedence over any oaths to individual institutions that derive their raison d'etre from the Constitution itself. Without the Constitution, there is no United States of America. Without the United States of America, there is no Department of Defense. Without the DoD, there is no NSA or ONDCP.
dicroce 12y ago
Our country is full of police departments that fund themselves through seizures of drug money, that they know about by using data our intelligence services collected on us. I wonder who's using the phone data to buy and sell stocks? Maybe that's what they'll get into once we legalize marijuana.
- ProAm 12y ago
  There are easier ways for the government to make money. There is a strong belief the CIA was selling drugs to citizens in the 80s to fund themselves [1] [1]http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
  - kelvin0 12y ago
    Why the downvotes? French article, one among many that mention Drug smuggling by some agencies (CIA?) http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-vie-abracadabrante-d-un-pilote-d-avion-trafiquant-de-drogue-11-03-2013-1638589_24.php http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-vie-abracadabrante-d-un-pilot...
    - coldtea 12y ago
      Some people are always surprised by well established facts half the world knows about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_traffic...
  - justizin 12y ago
    While this story may be true, it doesn't quite support 'There are easier ways for the government to make money.' The CIA is very different from local law enforcement agencies, and they don't just rely on the material support of siezures of cash and other things which go to auction, but a substantial portion of all of their staffing budgets come from federal drug grants, which means that there are individuals who need to protect the drug war in order to protect their jobs. There are scarcely easier ways for law enforcement to fund itself than to sieze cash from marijuana farmers and distributors. Even legalization campaigns to tax and regulate come across as shockingly close to protection schemes, since not supporting them is effectively supporting the continued risk of militarized police encounters.
psychometry 12y ago
Do I really need to download this massive PDF to find out what the useless title of this submission means? Mods, please edit.
- eli 12y ago
  I believe HN guidelines are to use the title from the source document. In this case, "Hemisphere Synopsis." Don't think that's much better.
  - dang 12y ago
    When the document has more than one title, it makes sense to use the most informative one. The submitted title was "DO Not mention Hemisphere in any official reports or court documents". That broke the guidelines, certainly by being baity and arguably by editorializing as well.
    - gus_massa 12y ago
      The original title was a quote from page 13. A very interesting quote, but with very little context information.
      - dang 12y ago
        I know, but picking an arbitrary sentence to emphasize one tendentious point is a form of spin, and thus arguably editorializing. In the absence of any good title, subtitle, or caption, it's ok to pick the sentence from the article that best and most neutrally represents it as a whole. But that is not the same thing.
droopyEyelids 12y ago
Wow. We actually have secret police in America. I didn't really put together what that means until now. There are 'law enforcement' agencies that operate outside the law, and they fight to keep their very existence from being exposed in court. Thats crazy.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Not very unlike the times of J.E Hoover. Just with more technology.
kabdib 12y ago
Writing my representative and senators now. To hell with these people.
- jnbiche 12y ago
  >Writing my representative and senators now. That will accomplish absolutely nothing, except to legitimize those who have overseen this reprehensible development, and all the other political and social catastrophes of the past 30-40 years. Our...political...system...is...fundamentally...broken. Voting, writing your congressman, and helping elect another corrupt politician are all activities that do nothing to improve the status quo. Voting in particular helps maintain the facade that America is a functioning democracy, when in fact our only choices are two sides of the same coin. The sooner the citizenry understand that, the better we'll all be. Instead, work toward educating your fellow citizens about these problems, and why they're happening. Refrain from spending your money on companies that back up the status quo. It's a hard task, but there are some major offenders (defense industry and banking industry are two big ones). If you're entrepreneurial or technical, consider developing technical solutions to these political problems, that work around the problems or help solve them. This recent ycombinator company offering "justice-as-a-service" is a good example of this approach: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-tickets/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-... They're starting small (parking tickets), but you have to start somewhere. And there's lots of room for growth in the injustice sector.
  - kelvin0 12y ago
    I am sometimes surprised that this type of argument gets downvoted. How can it be said that the political system is NOT broken? You`d think after all the information uncovered by Snowden this would be obvious to most of us.
    - tedunangst 12y ago
      Saying "the system is broken because it doesn't represent my interests" doesn't seem likely to go anywhere. Someone will always say that. Assuming you fix the system, whoever's interests are currently being represented will make the exact same complaint. For the majority of American history, the system was fundamentally broken for women. That wasn't fixed by women sitting out and saying boohoo.
tptacek 12y ago
This is a story NYT broke in 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph... Obviously, this is deeply fucked up.
- eli 12y ago
  Indeed, this seems to be a different (newer?) version of the same slide deck the NYTimes published.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    The NYT seems to describe the slide deck, down to the case studies at the end.
    - eli 12y ago
      It's buried in a tiny link, but they actually published the deck with the article: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/02/us/hemisphere-project.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/02/us/hemisphere-...
jkn 12y ago
Can anyone help me with this most emphasized sentence, "Hemisphere is law enforcement sensitive!"... what is it supposed to mean?
- jellicle 12y ago
  Compartmentalize. Don't tell anyone outside law enforcement. It's our little secret.
- tim333 12y ago
  Wikipedia has: "Limited Distribution, Proprietary, Originator Controlled, Law Enforcement Sensitive were designations the Pentagon attempted in 2011 to exempt from President Obama's Executive Order 13556" Executive Order 13556 "Controlled Unclassified Information" required a public registry of such information and that the registry and implementing directives would be available to the public.
  - tacotime 12y ago
    woah, I hadn't even considered that the term has an explicit legal definition. Scary stuff. Protect and serve the people but do it behind closed doors because the people can't handle the truth, right? Problem is the people can't make an informed vote on something they don't know about. The line between democracy and fascism is a fine one and I feel more like our government's mission is creeping in a definite direction every time one of these stories comes to light. I thank the god I don't believe that there are real patriots in this world like Snowden and the EFF who are trying to put the power of the truth in the hands of the people.
    - tim333 12y ago
      My impression was Obama had issued the executive order to make public "controlled unclassified information" so the guys used a euphemism so if taken to court they could they had no undeclared controlled unclassified information. Sensitive information maybe but not controlled.
tomcam 12y ago
Let me commend them on the clarity of their writing. When the audiences is themselves it's brisk, vigorous, candid, and refreshingly to the point. Now contrast that with monstrosities like the Affordable Health Care Act, thousands of pages long, nearly impenetrable, and executed without any of the legislators involved actually reading or understanding it. Or the tax code, which is incapable of returning idempotent values when the same functions are applied to identical inputs.
- logicchains 12y ago
  They should rewrite the tax code in Haskell. Not only would that simplify it greatly, it'd also lead to a significant increase in the number of MonadFactoryFactories in Enterprise tax-handling code, which might ultimately motivate Oracle to add higher kinded polymorphism to Java. One can always dream...
DanielBMarkham 12y ago
Sidebar: for all the ranting that deserves to be done here, it's also interesting to note that this was an internal IT program, like many other programs I suspect HN readers may have participated in. There was a help desk, a POC, a procedure to follow, and so on. They didn't want the average Law Enforcement schmuck calling operations! Instead you had to contact your POC. They were probably afraid of being overwhelemed by call volume. Turnaround looks like a couple of hours on a good day. In addition, they were doing one of those "train the trainer" things where they were looking at using the POCS to create "super users" to work the system and work with the local folks. Must have been a real concern about volume and support. Gad, how many people were (are) using this thing, anyway? Email was the preferred medium of response, so no online app, at least as far as end-users go. In addition, there was a section about "deconfliction" which was a bit confusing to me, but I never took the training. Was there training? I wonder if, along with this deck, there wasn't a 1-day or 2-day class? If so, who was sent to take it? It always surprises me that when you see something really bad, how normal it all looks and acts. I can just see a conference room at some Holiday Inn full of regular-looking middle-aged folks, slurping up bad coffee and stale donuts, wondering if they were going to be let out early while some other guy putzes around with a MacBook and a projector and an assistant hands out TS/SCI forms.
- justizin 12y ago
  Yes, they met at a Holiday Inn, drank shitty coffee, ate stale donuts, some guy complained about video adapters, and then they spent the day discussing how to completely subvert the fourth amendment of the constitution.
flint 12y ago
End the War on Drugs
Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago
Doesn't surprise me at all. I've been subject to 'random physical search' in very unexpected situation, twice. Both of those cases were when I had been in (phone) contact in previous days with guys which phones were highly likely to be monitored by law enforcement. - Random isn't nearly as random, as you might think.
mixologic 12y ago
This is a database of call detail records (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record) and the numbers they have called, and numbers that have called them. It does not contain subscriber data (names, account information) - just metadata about calls. They use this database to find cycled phone numbers that have similar calling patterns. (Phone number 1 tends to make and receive calls from number 2, 4, 9 and 13. in geographic area X) Phone number 1 stops making calls, and phone number 50 starts making/receiving calls to 2, 4, 9, and 13 in area Y. So they can assume that whomever owns 50 is the same person that used to own 1 and now they're in area Y. Maybe Im just being clueless today, but can anybody explain to me what is so chilling about this system? I don't see where it can really be abused unless you've got some stalker that works for LA's DEA and they're trying to find out their estranged ex-wife's new phone number?
- fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
  Subscriber data is easily matched, as mentioned in the slides. It advises law enforcement officers and other judicial officials to perjure themselves. There have been enough discussions about the value of metadata for identifying people that one should have an opinion by now as to whether it is a violation of one's rights for the gov't to collect it indiscriminately.
- alexbecker 12y ago
  When you have the entire call graph, it's almost trivial to match it up to names. And then you know who everyone calls and who calls them, which I would argue is almost as fundamental an affront to privacy as knowing the actual content.
  - mixologic 12y ago
    Law enforcement doesn't have the entire call graph. They have a service, that they can request specific data from, that takes 2-5 days to return the requested information, which is pretty much only "additional phones, and switched phones", and they have to have a subpoena to get that data in the first place. This isnt some google search they can mine for whatever. The 2-5 day lag is almost certainly paperwork bureaucracy verifying that they have a legal reason to search the database. I suppose the folks at the "Hemisphere Regional Data Center" could theoretically match up the names to the phone numbers (not AT ALL trivial - I used to work with credit header data and telco record data - the data quality is an absolute shitshow), but that power certainly is not in the hands of any local law enforcement.
rubbingalcohol 12y ago
Not sure if this will be helpful or considered blogspam, but I tried to summarize and analyze the slide deck here. http://blog.rubbingalcoholic.com/post/97508750503/how-the-dea-covers-up-illegal-evidence-gathering http://blog.rubbingalcoholic.com/post/97508750503/how-the-de...

199 points by jakewalker 12y ago

yuvadam 12y ago

Can someone pleas provide further context for this doc?

sirn 12y ago
EFF also posted this link alongside with the PDF in their Twitter: http://truth-out.org/news/item/26159-local-and-state-police-involved-in-sensitive-hemisphere-program http://truth-out.org/news/item/26159-local-and-state-police-...
Theodores 12y ago
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph... In the mainstream media, no less. Here is the 'powerpoint': http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/782287/database.pdf http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/782287/database.pdf You have nothing to hide...
lambda 12y ago
Here's some more information: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-amicus-brief-urges-court-order-criminal-discovery-surveillance-programs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-amicus-brief-urges...

appleflaxen 12y ago

It chills me to the core when the legal system needs to shield itself from the citizenry.

NotAtWork 12y ago

The simple truth is this: Anyone who supports the war on drugs as it is currently being run has abandoned what the US stood for at its founding regarding liberty, freedom, and the rule of law.

kavabean 12y ago
I agree with the main thrust of your comment but perpetuating the 'immaculate conception' myth of the US as a government of, for, and by the people is counterproductive. In particular the war on drugs absolutely goes against the ideas 'espoused' at that time. But that still holds. Ask any senator what America stands for and they will say something like "liberty, freedom, and justice for all". That doesn't mean it is what they work for in the background. Even while framing the constitution the controlling landowners of the US, i.e. the "US", were aware of the internal enemy that needed to be controlled. "The framers of the constitution made the determination that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent" http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm Where the "opulent" are the class from which the framers originated. This is not a new development.
- NotAtWork 12y ago
  > makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to insure that the government will, in his words "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform My point wasn't that this didn't happen or the US was some magical egalitarian wonderland (though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods). Rather, my point was the manner in which they did this was to construct a system of law that protected the private individual from the instruments of government, and that we're slowly undoing that precise social contract - not stealing their wealth in exchange for restraint on government powers. It's hard to argue even though the founding of the US wasn't perfect, and that these instruments largely came about as a protection for the wealthy, that it didn't significantly raise the profile of the citizen-as-having-rights-to-be-protected form of government or that the US doesn't have a long history of viewing such policies as important, even if there have been historic violations. I think you'd even have trouble finding periods similar to the 50-70 year long ratcheting we've seen meant to undermine those exact same rights, or that their infringement has crept so far up the social ladder.
  - 12y ago

salmonellaeater 12y ago

It's chilling that they explicitly mention parallel construction on page 12: When a complete set of CDRs are subpoenaed from the carrier, then all memorialized references to relevant and pertinent calls can be attributed to the carrier's records, thus "walling off" the information obtained from Hemisphere. In other words, Hemisphere can easily be protected if it is used as a pointer system to uncover relevant numbers.

jamesk_au 12y ago
The notion of "walling off" information apparently also extends to court testimony and the prosecution brief: "However, when the mention of Hemisphere data in official documentation or court testimony is unavoidable ... Hemisphere analysts might advise the investigator on issues such as report writing, presentation to the prosecutor, and the trial phase." (p14) Just extraordinary.
gojomo 12y ago
Paralleled is even used as a verb near the bottom of page 10.
CamperBob2 12y ago
Here's the deal. If you work for an agency like the NSA or ONDCP as either a contractor or a full-time employee, and you're aware of a program like this, and you do not act to disclose it to the press and/or subvert it, then... Hell, I'm not even going to finish that thought. If I do, it will seem redundant to someone with a conscience, and legally actionable otherwise.
- malandrew 12y ago
  ... you're not upholding the Constitution of the United States, which you took and oath to defend. The oath to protect the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic should take precedence over any oaths to individual institutions that derive their raison d'etre from the Constitution itself. Without the Constitution, there is no United States of America. Without the United States of America, there is no Department of Defense. Without the DoD, there is no NSA or ONDCP.

dicroce 12y ago

Our country is full of police departments that fund themselves through seizures of drug money, that they know about by using data our intelligence services collected on us. I wonder who's using the phone data to buy and sell stocks? Maybe that's what they'll get into once we legalize marijuana.

ProAm 12y ago
There are easier ways for the government to make money. There is a strong belief the CIA was selling drugs to citizens in the 80s to fund themselves [1] [1]http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
- kelvin0 12y ago
  Why the downvotes? French article, one among many that mention Drug smuggling by some agencies (CIA?) http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-vie-abracadabrante-d-un-pilote-d-avion-trafiquant-de-drogue-11-03-2013-1638589_24.php http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-vie-abracadabrante-d-un-pilot...
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Some people are always surprised by well established facts half the world knows about. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_traffic...
- justizin 12y ago
  While this story may be true, it doesn't quite support 'There are easier ways for the government to make money.' The CIA is very different from local law enforcement agencies, and they don't just rely on the material support of siezures of cash and other things which go to auction, but a substantial portion of all of their staffing budgets come from federal drug grants, which means that there are individuals who need to protect the drug war in order to protect their jobs. There are scarcely easier ways for law enforcement to fund itself than to sieze cash from marijuana farmers and distributors. Even legalization campaigns to tax and regulate come across as shockingly close to protection schemes, since not supporting them is effectively supporting the continued risk of militarized police encounters.

psychometry 12y ago

Do I really need to download this massive PDF to find out what the useless title of this submission means? Mods, please edit.

eli 12y ago
I believe HN guidelines are to use the title from the source document. In this case, "Hemisphere Synopsis." Don't think that's much better.
- dang 12y ago
  When the document has more than one title, it makes sense to use the most informative one. The submitted title was "DO Not mention Hemisphere in any official reports or court documents". That broke the guidelines, certainly by being baity and arguably by editorializing as well.
  - gus_massa 12y ago
    The original title was a quote from page 13. A very interesting quote, but with very little context information.
    - dang 12y ago
      I know, but picking an arbitrary sentence to emphasize one tendentious point is a form of spin, and thus arguably editorializing. In the absence of any good title, subtitle, or caption, it's ok to pick the sentence from the article that best and most neutrally represents it as a whole. But that is not the same thing.

droopyEyelids 12y ago

Wow. We actually have secret police in America. I didn't really put together what that means until now. There are 'law enforcement' agencies that operate outside the law, and they fight to keep their very existence from being exposed in court. Thats crazy.

coldtea 12y ago
Not very unlike the times of J.E Hoover. Just with more technology.

kabdib 12y ago

Writing my representative and senators now. To hell with these people.

jnbiche 12y ago
>Writing my representative and senators now. That will accomplish absolutely nothing, except to legitimize those who have overseen this reprehensible development, and all the other political and social catastrophes of the past 30-40 years. Our...political...system...is...fundamentally...broken. Voting, writing your congressman, and helping elect another corrupt politician are all activities that do nothing to improve the status quo. Voting in particular helps maintain the facade that America is a functioning democracy, when in fact our only choices are two sides of the same coin. The sooner the citizenry understand that, the better we'll all be. Instead, work toward educating your fellow citizens about these problems, and why they're happening. Refrain from spending your money on companies that back up the status quo. It's a hard task, but there are some major offenders (defense industry and banking industry are two big ones). If you're entrepreneurial or technical, consider developing technical solutions to these political problems, that work around the problems or help solve them. This recent ycombinator company offering "justice-as-a-service" is a good example of this approach: http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-tickets/ http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-... They're starting small (parking tickets), but you have to start somewhere. And there's lots of room for growth in the injustice sector.
- kelvin0 12y ago
  I am sometimes surprised that this type of argument gets downvoted. How can it be said that the political system is NOT broken? You`d think after all the information uncovered by Snowden this would be obvious to most of us.
  - tedunangst 12y ago
    Saying "the system is broken because it doesn't represent my interests" doesn't seem likely to go anywhere. Someone will always say that. Assuming you fix the system, whoever's interests are currently being represented will make the exact same complaint. For the majority of American history, the system was fundamentally broken for women. That wasn't fixed by women sitting out and saying boohoo.

tptacek 12y ago

This is a story NYT broke in 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph... Obviously, this is deeply fucked up.

eli 12y ago
Indeed, this seems to be a different (newer?) version of the same slide deck the NYTimes published.
- tptacek 12y ago
  The NYT seems to describe the slide deck, down to the case studies at the end.
  - eli 12y ago
    It's buried in a tiny link, but they actually published the deck with the article: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/02/us/hemisphere-project.html http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/02/us/hemisphere-...

jkn 12y ago

Can anyone help me with this most emphasized sentence, "Hemisphere is law enforcement sensitive!"... what is it supposed to mean?

jellicle 12y ago
Compartmentalize. Don't tell anyone outside law enforcement. It's our little secret.
tim333 12y ago
Wikipedia has: "Limited Distribution, Proprietary, Originator Controlled, Law Enforcement Sensitive were designations the Pentagon attempted in 2011 to exempt from President Obama's Executive Order 13556" Executive Order 13556 "Controlled Unclassified Information" required a public registry of such information and that the registry and implementing directives would be available to the public.
- tacotime 12y ago
  woah, I hadn't even considered that the term has an explicit legal definition. Scary stuff. Protect and serve the people but do it behind closed doors because the people can't handle the truth, right? Problem is the people can't make an informed vote on something they don't know about. The line between democracy and fascism is a fine one and I feel more like our government's mission is creeping in a definite direction every time one of these stories comes to light. I thank the god I don't believe that there are real patriots in this world like Snowden and the EFF who are trying to put the power of the truth in the hands of the people.
  - tim333 12y ago
    My impression was Obama had issued the executive order to make public "controlled unclassified information" so the guys used a euphemism so if taken to court they could they had no undeclared controlled unclassified information. Sensitive information maybe but not controlled.

tomcam 12y ago

Let me commend them on the clarity of their writing. When the audiences is themselves it's brisk, vigorous, candid, and refreshingly to the point. Now contrast that with monstrosities like the Affordable Health Care Act, thousands of pages long, nearly impenetrable, and executed without any of the legislators involved actually reading or understanding it. Or the tax code, which is incapable of returning idempotent values when the same functions are applied to identical inputs.

logicchains 12y ago
They should rewrite the tax code in Haskell. Not only would that simplify it greatly, it'd also lead to a significant increase in the number of MonadFactoryFactories in Enterprise tax-handling code, which might ultimately motivate Oracle to add higher kinded polymorphism to Java. One can always dream...

DanielBMarkham 12y ago

Sidebar: for all the ranting that deserves to be done here, it's also interesting to note that this was an internal IT program, like many other programs I suspect HN readers may have participated in. There was a help desk, a POC, a procedure to follow, and so on. They didn't want the average Law Enforcement schmuck calling operations! Instead you had to contact your POC. They were probably afraid of being overwhelemed by call volume. Turnaround looks like a couple of hours on a good day. In addition, they were doing one of those "train the trainer" things where they were looking at using the POCS to create "super users" to work the system and work with the local folks. Must have been a real concern about volume and support. Gad, how many people were (are) using this thing, anyway? Email was the preferred medium of response, so no online app, at least as far as end-users go. In addition, there was a section about "deconfliction" which was a bit confusing to me, but I never took the training. Was there training? I wonder if, along with this deck, there wasn't a 1-day or 2-day class? If so, who was sent to take it? It always surprises me that when you see something really bad, how normal it all looks and acts. I can just see a conference room at some Holiday Inn full of regular-looking middle-aged folks, slurping up bad coffee and stale donuts, wondering if they were going to be let out early while some other guy putzes around with a MacBook and a projector and an assistant hands out TS/SCI forms.

justizin 12y ago
Yes, they met at a Holiday Inn, drank shitty coffee, ate stale donuts, some guy complained about video adapters, and then they spent the day discussing how to completely subvert the fourth amendment of the constitution.

flint 12y ago

End the War on Drugs

Sami_Lehtinen 12y ago

Doesn't surprise me at all. I've been subject to 'random physical search' in very unexpected situation, twice. Both of those cases were when I had been in (phone) contact in previous days with guys which phones were highly likely to be monitored by law enforcement. - Random isn't nearly as random, as you might think.

mixologic 12y ago

This is a database of call detail records (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record) and the numbers they have called, and numbers that have called them. It does not contain subscriber data (names, account information) - just metadata about calls. They use this database to find cycled phone numbers that have similar calling patterns. (Phone number 1 tends to make and receive calls from number 2, 4, 9 and 13. in geographic area X) Phone number 1 stops making calls, and phone number 50 starts making/receiving calls to 2, 4, 9, and 13 in area Y. So they can assume that whomever owns 50 is the same person that used to own 1 and now they're in area Y. Maybe Im just being clueless today, but can anybody explain to me what is so chilling about this system? I don't see where it can really be abused unless you've got some stalker that works for LA's DEA and they're trying to find out their estranged ex-wife's new phone number?

fnordfnordfnord 12y ago
Subscriber data is easily matched, as mentioned in the slides. It advises law enforcement officers and other judicial officials to perjure themselves. There have been enough discussions about the value of metadata for identifying people that one should have an opinion by now as to whether it is a violation of one's rights for the gov't to collect it indiscriminately.
alexbecker 12y ago
When you have the entire call graph, it's almost trivial to match it up to names. And then you know who everyone calls and who calls them, which I would argue is almost as fundamental an affront to privacy as knowing the actual content.
- mixologic 12y ago
  Law enforcement doesn't have the entire call graph. They have a service, that they can request specific data from, that takes 2-5 days to return the requested information, which is pretty much only "additional phones, and switched phones", and they have to have a subpoena to get that data in the first place. This isnt some google search they can mine for whatever. The 2-5 day lag is almost certainly paperwork bureaucracy verifying that they have a legal reason to search the database. I suppose the folks at the "Hemisphere Regional Data Center" could theoretically match up the names to the phone numbers (not AT ALL trivial - I used to work with credit header data and telco record data - the data quality is an absolute shitshow), but that power certainly is not in the hands of any local law enforcement.

rubbingalcohol 12y ago

Not sure if this will be helpful or considered blogspam, but I tried to summarize and analyze the slide deck here. http://blog.rubbingalcoholic.com/post/97508750503/how-the-dea-covers-up-illegal-evidence-gathering http://blog.rubbingalcoholic.com/post/97508750503/how-the-de...