A “confidential” program comes to light due to a public records request:
Hemisphere covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch — not just those made by AT&T customers — and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some four billion call records are added to the database every day, the slides say; technical specialists say a single call may generate more than one record. Unlike the N.S.A. data, the Hemisphere data includes information on the locations of callers.
Checks and balances:
Crucially, they said, the phone data is stored by AT&T, and not by the government as in the N.S.A. program. It is queried for phone numbers of interest mainly using what are called “administrative subpoenas,” those issued not by a grand jury or a judge but by a federal agency, in this case the D.E.A.
Here’s the whole presentation. The DEA concealed the existence of the Hemisphere program by using data from Hemisphere as a “pointer system” to make requests for full call records from suspects’ cell phone providers.
If you want a little more information on how law enforcement uses data from cell phones, this Ars Technica piece has a good run-down of how trawling through 150K cell numbers caught some bank robbers in the rural Southwest.
PopeRatzo
They’re just trying to keep us safe from privacy.
Baud
I’ve said before that we’ve lost more privacy due to the drug war than the war on terror.
Wait till people find out that the Supreme Court has said that they can search your trash without a warrant.
the Conster
@PopeRatzo:
Yet, here you are on the internet.
cathyx
All the government wants is for us to live clean honest lives. Missionary position sex with only your spouses, go where you say you are going, take only the prescription drug that your doctor prescribed for you, and drink only one alcoholic drink with dinner, if you must have alcohol.
c u n d gulag
Conservative POV:
GODDAMN RIGHT government shouldn’t store calls forever!
Not when a corporation can, instead!!!
Marc
Wasn’t this the point of the piece by the Wire writer? Namely, that the DEA has had the ability to do things like this for decades?
PopeRatzo
@the Conster:
What does my being in public on the Internet have to do with the things I do privately and the government snooping on those private things?
I’m not sure if you were pretending to be clever or are just willfully dense, but if you’re representative, it’s no wonder the government believes it can get away with forcing a private corporation to store 26 years worth of their customer’s phone records. Because you never know when a call made in 1989 is going to stop terrorism or prevent a quarter-ounce of pot from being sold in 2013.
For fuck’s sake. It’s Labor Day, not Be Stupid on the Internet Day.
raven
@Marc: And anyone who thought different was naive at best.
Keith P
Again, kind of old news since word of AT&T having a dedicated room for government purposes installed in their switch building came out in the mid-aughts. Then our lovely Congress voted to grant AT&T et al immunity from lawsuits over privacy violations.
Mino
Interesting piece of sophistry in their “administrative subpoenas”. As if it were just violation of some regulation. Thought there was a higher standard for criminal cases. Called the Fourth Amendment.
.
geg6
@raven:
This. I don’t get the shock about this. Who didn’t know they were intercepting cell phone calls for law enforcement purposes? I certainly did and it was one reason I resisted getting one for several years. And has no one watched a police procedural show in the last decade or two? Really?
Cacti
White people problems, brought to you by mistermix.
Tripod
Oh goodie. Another round of mah freedumz!®.
Ted & Hellen
@Cacti:
Racist idiot.
c u n d gulag
@raven:
I’m with you.
I was a young adult at the time, and watched, and read about, the post-Nixon/Vietnam Church Committee Hearings.
And when I heard about the FISA Court, THAT was when I realized that, whether it was the government, or a company, or both, there was the capability to store every singe call and electronic transaction.
And any opportunity to put that “national security” genie back in the bottle, had passed, even then.
We’re not crying at spilled milk at this point. It’s well-aged cheese.
Cacti
@Ted & Hellen:
Good morning, Turd & Heckle.
You’ve still not answered. On a scale of 1-10, how disappointed were you when you found out that the oldest of the suspects in the Christopher Lane shooting was a white kid?
And was it more or less disappointing than Jerry Sandusky’s conviction?
Villago Delenda Est
Look, people….
The modern electronic telephone switch is just a computer that logs and retains every action that passes through it. This is by design, so that you can be billed for use.
This has been true for DECADES. The question is, who has access to the call records that are generated by picking up your phone and placing a call, and under what circumstances those records are obtained by parties other than the telephone company (“We’re the telephone company…we don’t care, we don’t have to”).
The point is, all electronic communication is logged. All of it. Every last bit. It’s trivial to do so. Which is what Pope Ratzo doesn’t seem to grasp. The information is being gathered as a matter of routine. The question becomes, then, what happens to all this information once it’s been gathered, and what agencies have access to that information under what circumstances.
the Conster
@PopeRatzo:
Anyone who assumes they have privacy while using digital technology is being naive and/or willfully stupid. The toothpaste has been out of the tube for years. You can have only two of the following three things: convenience, privacy and security. Since you want to complain on the internet about your privacy, you’ll be pushing the Overton privacy policy window leftward by supporting all of the politicians who are currently out there telling the American people that there will just have to be unsolved crimes and a few terrorist acts here and there as the trade off for privacy and the end to the war on some drugs. Oh wait…
me
@Cacti: So, DEA surveillance is a “white people problem” despite most people arrested for drug crimes are minority.
Cacti
@me:
The overwhelming majority of drug arrests and convictions are at the local and state level, and have a big fat nada to do with the DEA.
Fail.
Ted & Hellen
@Cacti:
Good morning, racist idiot.
me
@Cacti: Right, look at the Federal RICO cases and correct your ignorance.
kindness
I didn’t like it when the NSA is sweeping up all our datas, but I figured they were going to no matter what I felt, secret courts and all. But the DEA? I mean the DEA? An agency that has gone obviously power mad over the last couple decades? Jesus, that’s just asking for trouble. The DEA shouldn’t be able to go through a FISA type court.
Cacti
@me:
How do RICO prosecutions change the basic fact that the overwhelming majority of drug convictions in the US are not at the federal level?
Or do you really think the DEA is coordinating with the local PD in Anytown USA, to pinch the guy with a dime bag in his pocket?
Bruce Lawton
Legalize weed and eliminate the DEA. That would solve some budget woes and prison overcrowding but what would we do with all those macho pistol packing types and SWAT team equipment??
Emma
@Baud: Agreed. The DEA scares the crap out of me.
Villago Delenda Est
@c u n d gulag:
For the record, for you youngsters out there who weren’t alive when onions on your belt were the fashion at the time, the Church Committee hearings were in the 1970’s, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth.
The only thing holding back the storage of call data is storage capacity. Man, I’m so old I remember when a 40MB hard drive on my 386 was a HUGE upgrade from that 20MB hard drive on my 286…
cathyx
@Bruce Lawton: What would you do with all the privatized prisons who donate money to politicians?
A Humble Lurker
@Ted & Hellen:
By the way, you never did answer me about Mnemosyne’s analogy. You could now, you know.
Baud
I looked at the slides. The data includes city and state of the call. Doesn’t say GPS location.
FWIW.
Villago Delenda Est
@Cacti:
And the point here is that while we fret over call records, out in the streets young African Americans are being routinely stopped and frisked (talk about your privacy violations…) for walking down the street while black.
Not to mention gunned down for wearing hoodies and concealing Skittles in their pockets…
Liberty60
@Cacti:
Wait, what??
The drug war is a white people’s problem?
Liberty60
@Villago Delenda Est: Do you think the two phenomena (warrantless surveillance and stop & frisk) are unrelated?
A Humble Lurker
@Liberty60:
I do.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
No DEA or NSA required for either.
Thuggish local law enforcement has been brutalizing people of color for centuries. No federal assistance required.
In fact, most of the time, it’s taken federal intervention to clip the wings of the worst excesses of state and local level law enforcement.
Liberty60
How does it make any political sense to split the federal drug war apart from the local drug war?
How do we arouse public anger at stop and frisk, when we shrug off telephone surveillance?
Does anyone’s position change if it is the NYPD that is doing the surveillance, instead of the NEA?
Villago Delenda Est
@Liberty60:
Not at all. It’s just that one warrantless surveillance) seems to be more important than the other (stop and frisk) to some people around here.
I might add that the Hemisphere data is of a meta nature. The AT&T switches are primarily for land lines, not cell phones, and have detailed address information of the origins of land lines. This is so that a particular phone number, at a particular address, can be billed for calls. There are separate switches for mobile phones that interface with the land line phones to utilize that part of the network. Those separate mobile phone switches, and the cells (that pass the call to each other as you zoom down the Interstate) maintain their own databases that, by necessity, include GPS data.
Comrade Dread
Ah, the war on some people who use drugs. Motto: “NSA? Pffft. Amateurs.”
Half this country’s problems might be solved if we ended the drug war and repurposed the DEA with the new mission of enforcing regulations and laws on corporations.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Real the slides. I don’t think they get GPS data. I think they get data on which cell towers were used.
The slides are a lot more plain English than previous slides describing the NSA program. People should read them for themselves.
kc
@Cacti:
Yeah, because the war on drugs has never affected black people
Dumb-ass.
Ted & Hellen
Ignore the racist Cacti.
She believes all people of color spend all their time doing drugs and running from law enforcement, and thus have zero interest in having their non-drug related communications protected from government snooping.
Cacti
@Liberty60:
Because the States and the Fed are enforcing different sets of laws. If the federal government removed all common street drugs from the Controlled Substances Act tomorrow, it wouldn’t automatically invalidate all 50 sets of state laws covering the same issue.
Jeremy
@the Conster: I agree. Privacy was lost with the creation of the computer and the internet. Anyone who pretends we had all of this privacy in the first place is a fool.
And for all the complaining I hear from some in this country about privacy, go to countries in Europe, or Asia where you have hardly any privacy.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: Storage capacity for call detail records isn’t holding anything back at all; well-managed SANs dropped under $1/GB a couple of years ago. For a company with annual revenue over $125B the cost of storing every CDR forever is less than a rounding error.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: Storage capacity for call detail records isn’t holding anything back at all; well-managed SANs dropped under $1/GB a couple of years ago. For a company with annual revenue over $125B the cost of storing every CDR forever is less than a rounding error.
Gin & Tonic
@Villago Delenda Est: Storage capacity for call detail records isn’t holding anything back at all; well-managed SANs dropped under $1/GB a couple of years ago. For a company with annual revenue over $125B the cost of storing every CDR forever is less than a rounding error.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Villago Delenda Est:
All Fourth Amendment infringements are equal, some are just more equal than others.
Cacti
@kc:
And all of the “mah privacy” simpletons keep bleating the same note.
And the response remains…how many low level drug offenders have any interaction whatsoever with the DEA?
Liberty60
@Villago Delenda Est: The storing of customer data is perfectly fine- as others here have noted, its necessary and proper.
Its puzzling to me, this shrugging off of the sharing of that data with the government, local or federal. Its as if Fex ex were to allow any branch of government to open and inspect any parcel it ships.
Throwing out “what about stop and frisk?” is just a red herring, as if the two were mutually exclusive.
” warrantless surveillance) seems to be more important than the other (stop and frisk) to some people around here.”
Why do we have to choose? What, we have a limit on how many things we can be outraged about?
Gin & Tonic
Why am I getting these dupes?
kc
@me:
Just Cacti trying to shut down debate again.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud:
The point is, the GPS data is there in a phone company database. The DEA’s Hemisphere program may not glean it, but it can be gleaned.
It’s all tracked, all the time, because it has to be for the cell phone system to work.
Cacti
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Indeed.
You’ll notice which one is given priority in the following example
Villago Delenda Est
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
DING DING DING DING DING!
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Bruce Lawton:
@Comrade Dread:
And twenty years from now, Bruce and Dread are furiously writing their congresscritters to outlaw ZetaCo’s new cartoon mascot, Heroin Horse.
c u n d gulag
@Villago Delenda Est:
In the fall of ’76, my Freshman year of college, I was smart enough to know that computers were the wave of the future, and took a course teaching APL – Applied Programming Language.
To be able to do the homework, and prepare for tests, people in the class had to sign-up for the Computer Lab in the basement of one of the buildings, which had 2 CRT’s that were tied to a mainframe at the IBM plant a few miles down the road.
Being a commuter, and unable to go and sign-up for time all day, every day, I usually ended up there in the middle of the goddamn night.
Sadly, while I was smart enough to see the possibilities for the future, and despite already speaking three other languages besides English, COMPUTER languages threw me for a loop.
I got one of the few “C’s” I got in college in that course.
And then, even before my Senior year, APL was a dead language.
And I swore off computers at that time – too much change, too fast – and didn’t get one until the fall of 2000, when I felt things had settled down a bit.
I also realized that I was an information junkie, and if I got one, I would sit around and have no social life.
BINGO!
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!!!!!
Jeremy
@Liberty60: The problem is that one is more important than the other. I care more about people being harassed on the street than the NSA trying to prevent terrorist attacks.
I believe we need more transparency when it comes to the NSA but I don’t see them being compatible to the drug war and stop and frisk. Which by the way the Obama administration are doing good things when it comes to those two issues.
kc
@Villago Delenda Est:
We’ve talked about those things on this blog.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, to steal bread, to toke up, to shoot up, to smoke up, to snort up, to pop E, and to mix meth.
Villago Delenda Est
@Gin & Tonic:
Aye, that is indeed the nub of my gist. Data storage is very cheap. There are pretty much no limits on what data can be stored. The issue then, on the technical side, is what data can be mined.
There is of course the entire legal side, which is what law enforcement agencies have access to it, and under what circumstances. The fact that your personal papers and effects exist is not a license for law enforcement to casually peruse them, or at least if the 4th Amendment has anything to say about it.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est:
Gotcha. I think GPS data issues are relevant because it’s an open question whether GPS info is metadata that the Supreme Court has said can be searched without a warrant.
different-church-lady
@Gin & Tonic: It’s the internet — it’s filled with dupes.
Comrade Dread
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: Yes, regulation of the sale and distribution along with a shift in resources to prevention, intervention, and medical treatment would be more preferable and beneficial than prohibition.
El Cid
There is no distinction between federal, state, and local levels when it comes to surveillance, sourcing, and prosecution — information obtained at one level is always shared at the other levels.
Good lord, the very documents here specify that no law enforcement is to mention the source of the data when they obtain it from this program.
Why would anyone think that naming the level at which this program is generated means there is a distinction when it comes to arrest & prosecution?
‘Oh, we’re [state or local], there’s no way we’d be generating an arrest and prosecution based on a federally-guided program whose intel we can access but not mention.’
These programs never, ever remain at one level of government.
Anoniminous
@Gin & Tonic:
With a gig of storage coming in at under 10 cents it costs a company more time, effort, and money to delete data than pack it away in a data farm.
Jeremy
Going after Stop and Frisk and reforming our drug laws which Holder and President Obama have taken a lead on are more important to minorities and the country at large than the NSA. People have concerns but they don’t look at this from the prospective that libertarians do with their”OH MY GOD THIS IS A POLICE STATE” crap. You want to know what a police state is like, go over to North Korea, Russia, and China. Where you can’t even criticize the government, yet many out here are criticizing the government and no one is stopping you or rounding you up and placing you in a detention facility.
different-church-lady
I think we can all agree that catching bank robbers is a horrible thing.
Joey Maloney
@PopeRatzo: C’mon, EVERY day is Be Stupid On The Internet Day.
RepubAnon
@Cacti: Well, that’s what Reuters reported about the DFEA’s Special Operations Division.
(Source: Exclusive: U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans)
How many traffic stops and/or low-level drug arrests are triggered by the DEA giving a false tip to local law enforcement, or mistaken identification? Due to “parallel construction” (under which the possibly illegal search is covered up), it’s hard to say.
Liberty60
@Jeremy: This sort of debate is sounding alot like the worst aspects of the self-defeating left.
Any given issue is instantly pitted against some other issue, on the basis that the movement is allowed one, and only one focus.
LGBT versus feminism vs labor vs what-have-you.
Look, just because I don’t want the local law enforcement and the NEA to listen to a recording of my phone calls, doesn’t mean I am unconcerned about stop & frisk.
Yes, the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front can actually work together, you know.
Villago Delenda Est
Here’s a telling point. You’re never going to get Rand Paul worked up into a lather about stop and frisk in New York, or anywhere else.
However, he is outraged, outraged at the NSAs overreach on phone records.
Same is true for Greenwald.
Which is why Cacti dismisses these as “white people problems”.
Cacti
@Jeremy:
Fact:
Over 4 million people have been stopped and frisked by the NYPD since 2002. More than 85 percent of them were neither charged with a crime, nor a issued a citation. Another 85% were either black or hispanic.
Conjecture:
Federal agencies have been able access calling data that was the property of telecom companies, for an unspecified number of persons.
Now which one is sucking up all the oxygen around the brogressives?
kc
@different-church-lady:
I wish we put half as much effort into stopping the banks from robbing us.
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est:
Not arguing whether this is accurate or not, but I’d like to know what you based this conclusion on.
Corner Stone
It’s beyond laughable to say federal programs that gather information *do not* aid and assist local LEO’s.
Cacti
@Villago Delenda Est:
Ding ding ding ding ding!
For instance:
White blogger problems: “The NSA may have snooped my Sailor Moon hentai collection!”
Non-white parent problems: “I hope some George Zimmerman gun nut doesn’t shoot down my son for walking through his neighborhood.”
Corner Stone
@Comrade Dread:
Wouldn’t it be awesome if we found a way to incentivize these dedicated law enforcement officials into performing a real life Chapelle Show skit on some banksters?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Comrade Dread: Visualize the back wall of the neighborhood Sheetz being lined with packs of Marlboros, syringes of heroin, vials of crack, and bottles of meth and tell us again why this is a good thing.
Or do you honestly think it won’t be happening at your neighborhood Sheetz?
Emma
@Liberty60: Yes, the People’s Front of Judea and the Judean People’s Front can actually work together, you know.
Unless the first words coming from the People’s Front is “you Obamabots who are constantly kissing your Chosen One’s ass and have given up on freedom won’t admit….” At which point I have decided to turn it off and walk away. Why bother debating? Somewhere between the ACA freakout and the NSA freakout I came to realize that there’s a class of leftist that would rather blow things up that actually compromise and move a few steps forward.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
(How can I put this?)
“Meta-data” is a construct of the as-implemented Relational Data Model. Skipping the techy-tech talk, the practical result is “meta-data” in one Relational Database can be “data” in another. It all depends on how the system’s analyst(s) designed the implementation. Concrete example: the GPS data for a cell phone is “meta-data” for a telephone company and “data” for a cell phone service provider.
Cacti
@Emma:
And they love to
pull out their pricks and piss in the windspeak truth to power, in the halls of power, like drum circles and blogs.Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
The general tone of the outrage about NSA vs the meh, what else is new reaction to stop and frisk.
I’m a white middle aged male living in Oregon. I can’t possibly understand what it’s like for a black teen walking down a street somewhere in Harlem to be stopped for no reason at all and felt up by some guy in a blue uniform.
But I can begin to imagine. The screaming and yellling if people like me were subject to that sort of treatment would deafen bystanders on Coruscant.
The media (and people on this blog) harp on the NSA, and Snowden, yet outrages of a physical, in your face nature, not a “oh my god they’ve got a record of my phone call!” sort of thing are just, well, mundane. Uninteresting.
No wonder Cacti has an attitude problem about this.
kc
@Cacti:
It you didn’t spend all your time sucking all the air out of every single surveillance comment thread, you might have notice that those other things have been discussed, more than once, on this very site.
If you want to control the discourse 100% of the time, start your own goddamn blog instead of trying to hijack this one.
Baud
@Anoniminous:
For my purposes, it depends on whether the Supreme Court thinks GPS data is more like phone numbers (not protected) or call contents (protected).
Cacti
@kc:
Or what? You’ll run and tell daddy again?
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Villago Delenda Est: Bingo. Selective empathy is a thing, and not a very good thing.
Jeremy
@Liberty60: I don’t think you view Stop and Frisk and the drug war as not being important when compared to the NSA. I just think that some of the hyperbole about the NSA is over the top and that it doesn’t lead to reform of the program. I also have a problem with people waiting to address these issues when they have been out there since the beginning of the century.
El Cid
@Villago Delenda Est:
All well & good for Rand Paul, but I hate to break it to people of that opinion but those against whom such surveillance and privacy violations are most harshly practiced aren’t usually white.
Does anyone not remember the traditional targets of local, state, and federal ‘intelligence’ operations? Does anyone imagine that if the all-powerful phantom ACORN really still did exist that all of these apparatuses wouldn’t correlate to provide any opportunity to undermine any of its leaders?
That’s what has always been done in our nation’s history.
If I really thought these were merely isolated ‘white peoples’ problems’ and weren’t entirely likely as always and as they always always always have been targeted most viciously & effectively at taking down defenders of poor, labor & non-white interests, I’d be a lot more sanguine about it.
The people on whom the weight of these programs most heavily fall are not, I would strongly wager, whiny middle class whites. That would really be a departure from the historical norm.
Of course, it might be a long time before we find that out. Or not.
kc
@Emma:
Unless the first words coming from the People’s Front is “you Obamabots who are constantly kissing your Chosen One’s ass and have given up on freedom won’t admit blah blah blah
That’s odd; I don’t see anything like that on this thread. But I k is what mean; I feel the same way when someone starts shrieking “white people problems” every time this topic comes up
The Sheriff's A Ni-
I would like to think Cacti and company would have less problems with the NSA threads if there were, say, more FP posts on initiatives like sentencing reform and marijuana legalization.
Hell, maybe give him or someone the keys and have them go to town like Kay on education.
different-church-lady
@Emma:
Which explains the fondness for Guy Fawkes masks, I suppose.
Jeremy
@Villago Delenda Est: That was a great comment and I agree. I think the NSA should be more transparent and reformed. The problem is that too many people who harp on the NSA fail to take a moderate pragmatic approach which could lead to reform. They also alienate people who would be willing to listen, but the argument always turns into Obama= Bush and America is a police State. Which is not a serious argument, and a way to bring people together on the issue.
Cacti
@kc:
Would you like a tissue, dear?
Anoniminous
@Baud:
IANAL so I don’t keep up with the latest. The last I looked at the issue (2006?) expectation of privacy depended on where the call originated. If it was “in a public space” – whatever that means – there was no EofP. What I take from that is unless the call originated in one’s home the content is fair game for the snoops.
Felonius Monk
@Liberty60:
If the NEA is doing surveillance, we are really in deep shit. Especially if it’s the National Endowment for the Arts rather than the National Education Association that doing the surveilling. :)
Jeremy
@El Cid: But the problem is how do we protect the country from terrorism and value the privacy of the people. We need to strike the right balance and the problem is that too many people ignore the fact that terrorism exist and that we need to strike the right balance.
different-church-lady
@Jeremy: That’s because they’re not interested in reform — they’re interested in validation for their emotions.
Seeking a sense of proportion from that crowd is a futile endeavor.
ruemara
@kc: This. This has got to be snark.
Ted & Hellen
@Cacti:
Fixed that for ya.
But then I’d have to supposed that, being a racist, you believe all black kids act like that.
different-church-lady
@Jeremy: They don’t just ignore it, they claim the whole thing is just made up. All those dead people notwithstanding…
A Humble Lurker
@El Cid:
Uh…I don’t think they would, because apparently they didn’t, since everybody freaked out and shut it down after the Breitbrats flew in with their doctored video. If they had been everybody would have known that video was crap to begin with, because they’d have already had the real data.
Baud
@Anoniminous:
I’m sure this won’t be nuanced enough, but I don’t think it’s a public/private space issue. The Supreme Court has held that dialed numbers are not protected by the Fourth Amendment because you have no expectation of privacy in the numbers you dial to tell the phone company how to connect your call. What you say, however, is protected by the Fourth Amendment, so the police need a warrant to listen in on phone conversation (at least domestically).
different-church-lady
@Ted & Hellen: That’s good — now do Sandusky again.
kc
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
Marijuana legalization is supported by libertarians and is, therefore, clearly a white people’s problem
Anoniminous
@Jeremy:
To strike the right balance we need to have an adult conversation. In the US, at the moment, an impossibility.
El Cid
@Jeremy: I don’t think that many people at all ignore the fact that terrorism exists, and I think too many people easily accept bad arguments that (a) the purposes of these programs are, in practice, being used to protect us from terrorist attack and (b) these programs effectively carry out that purpose.
Which is all irrelevant here because this is a program specifically not about terrorism and about arresting & charging people by the sharing of federally-guided intel gathering with local authorities for drugs.
When local, state, and federal agencies were monitoring, undermining, and attacking black, ethnic, labor, and anti-war organizers during the late 1960s and 1970s (just to use examples from eras in which those operations were broadly exposed) it was done so by those people and using those techniques developed ostensibly for and justified to protect against Soviet & Chinese Communist attacks, including Third-World originating terrorist activities.
Punchline, though, being that the people who will get fucked over most badly by the misuse of such programs will not be middle class whites (whiny or otherwise) but the typical black, ethnic, labor, environmental and etc. leaders, organizers, and organizations.
Feel free to compartmentalize it at your own risk.
The threats to concentrated wealth & power are always and forever the targets of such programs — largely by personnel who truly believe that such leaders & organizers are doing something wrong — and not the middle class white whiners (as it were).
Maybe no one believes it, but those are the types of people I most worry about when I consider the implications of these broad surveillance (and their perhaps-not-yet-disclosed covert action parallel) institutions and practices.
It isn’t me I’m worried about. It’s the people who traditionally have been fucked over by such programs and who are likely undergoing such fuckings-over right now.
Power never, ever, ever sees these issues as separately and as compartmentalized as apparently a lot of people assume.
MD Rackham
@Cacti: Stop and Frisk has been known about since it first started. Once it became clear it was an official policy people have been complaining about it, with increasing coverage over the last several years. It’s been going on long enough now that cases have have had time to work their way through the legal system.
The revelation of the DEA having free access to a 26-year database of calls is breaking news.
That’s why we’re talking about the DEA here today. Although a lot of people here seem to be talking about the NSA, which is another whole issue.
JordanRules
@Jeremy: I agree with your sentiment, but want to be careful about granting the ‘terrorist’ boogey word any more power. Boston authorities dealt with the Marathon bombers using law enforcement techniques and it worked. I would be interested in knowing if they used any of the programs that have suddenly awed the liberty and leftist crowds. We need to strike the right balance because we need to strike the right balance. Its time to do an assessment because we’ve ignored it for so long. The DEA part of this does trigger my non-white people problem senses though. I know too much of how they work for it not too.
And as someone said above thread…who has not watched any of the police procedurals in the last 20 years. I mean geeeez! Genie has been out of the bottle and dancing in our faces on primetime in between commercials for corporate made drugs. LOL
Jeremy
@different-church-lady: Which is sad.
different-church-lady
@El Cid: Oh, yeah, the drug war — the same people think that’s bullshit too.
El Cid
@A Humble Lurker: No, they didn’t need ‘real data’, they had an easily available excuse to shut down the troublemakers which politicians had long been seeking to shut down. Why would it matter that the videotaped evidence was fake? Who gives a shit? Congress did what it wanted to do. Better to shut down ACORN first and apologize later than ask permission, they always say.
But, sure, okay–everyone tell themselves that intel & covert ops by local, state, and federal officials rarely target & harass (and worse) organizers for poor & minority power & rights.
No one should ever assume that just because power wants to take someone down that it’s always easy or convenient to do so.
The Brightfartists gave them an excuse. Doesn’t matter that it was an unsubstantiated and later proven invalid excuse. The excuse appeared, and, boom, fuck ’em.
ericblair
@Felonius Monk:
If it’s the National Education Association, you’ll get your phonecall transcripts in the mail with grammar corrections in red. “D+: See Me.”
If it’s the National Endowment for the Arts, you’ll get a new installation at the local art gallery. “Bob Phones for Pizza and Cuts Toenails: Composition I.”
Villago Delenda Est
@Mino:
Yeah, I noticed that too.
The military has a concept called “administrative punishment”. A small unit commander has the legal authority to do all sorts of things to military members under his command that do not approach the threshold of being subject to judicial review. It’s all “administrative”. And, oh yeah, big time, it includes things that would cause klaxons to sound on 4th Amendment grounds if a civilian were subjected to it. I participated in mandatory searches of barracks space ( a “health and welfare” inspection) that STOMPED on the 4th Amendment’s protections, big time. All perfectly legal and routine under military circumstances.
“Administrative subpoenas” indeed. To me, that just signifies business as usual, no need for you to concern yourself with the detail, your honor, as we rifle through these records on what normally would be called a “fishing expedition.”
MD Rackham
I haven’t seen anyone mention what I think is the biggest problem with the DEA story: the cover-up involved in where the information came from, and the constitutional problems associated with it.
The slides make clear that law enforcement should never mention the source of the data, and instead should be used as a “pointer” to gather other information. There are a couple of problems with this. If the original gathering of the phone information is found to be unconstitutional, then the subsequent information found via the “pointer” is inadmissible–fruit of the poisonous tree and all that.
Secondly, we know that in the case of NSA-provided data, prosecutors have been falsifying where the information came from, so it’s certainly possible (likely?) that the same is happening here. That not only implies perjury by the prosector, but also has issues with your constitutional right to face your accuser–something you can’t do if you’re lied to about who that accuser is.
Thirdly, the DEA routinely shares information with state and local law enforcement making this an issue for anyone having anything to do with illegal drugs, not just those charged under federal laws. About the only time DEA doesn’t share information is if they think they can get a bust all to themselves and thus get all the “glory.”
Liberty60
Its the intra-movement pissing matches that are the most reminiscent of Occupy, and the libertarians- my issue isn’t getting enough attention so I will cross my arms and hold my breath and accuse everyone else of being collaborators and counter-revolutionaries until I get the microphone.
Notice how this thread started with a discussion of federal surveillance and has degenerated into squabbling over who is most pure and concerned about non-white problems?
Liberty60
@MD Rackham: Which makes it all the more oppressive especially for poor people without access to good legal representation- you can’t cross examine secret evidence.
JordanRules
@Liberty60: Naw, the 2 comments aabove yours are about the programs, the implications etc. And El Cid is doing a damn good job bringing it full circle.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Based on a recent decision by the 5th Circuit:
I’m getting way outside my expertise here but it seems to me IF “business records” includes a digital recording of, say, email, as a standard business practice then there is no expectation of privacy. IF there isn’t a digital recording made as a standard business practice, such as a cell phone call, then there (may be) an expectation of privacy. However, I vaguely recall a case where a person using their cell phone in a park was tapped and the evidence of that conversation was allowed to be used in court since the call was made in a public space and — AFAIK — a conversation in a public space has never been granted an expectation of privacy.
Assuming I am not talking through my hat – an assumption you may not grant! :-) – the cell phone contents can be considered a waiver of expectation of privacy when:
1. The call is made in a Public Space
2. The call contents are digitally recorded as a standard business practice making a “business record”
What I take from that is if a business decides to start recording my cell phone communications as standard procedure then I have no expectation of privacy. Well. I can “expect” it but I’m not going to get it.
It would be helpful is someone who
knew what they were talking abouthad expertise in this area would weigh in.Corner Stone
@Jeremy:
I have honestly read this comment 5 times now. What?
Baud
@Anoniminous:
I’m not the expert you’re looking for, but I think you may be right, in the same way that the government can get your emails if the recipient turns it over to the government.
There is a federal statute called the Stored Communications Act that may protect recorded information, however, from warrentless searches.
Villago Delenda Est
@Corner Stone:
Not well worded, but I get the gist of it. Perhaps your parser needs to be tuned?
Corner Stone
@Villago Delenda Est: Hey, I said nothing when he said “moderate pragmatic” approach.
This one sounds to me like, “We need to eat but sometimes people forget about food but we need to eat.”
kc
@Liberty60:
Yep. And you’ll see it on every thread about surveillance issues.
Anoniminous
@Baud:
Oh hell. I vegged off the Stored Communications Act.
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.
I now have to go and help man the ACA table and try to tell the local dullards Obama isn’t coming to rip out their kidneys and give them to poor black gay Islamic eco-terrorists.
Thank you for the discussion.
Corner Stone
@kc: I wonder why that is?
Baud
@Anoniminous:
You too. Good luck with the ACA outreach. Critically important.
Emma
@different-church-lady: I really don’t get the whole Guy Fawkes thing. He was a conservative Catholic who wanted to re-install a Catholic monarch on the English throne. Yes, he was caught and tortured; but it wasn’t anything different than he would have done if the king had been a Catholic and Fawkes at the other end of the stick.
Weird, that whole thing. Even in the Moore thing the guy wasn’t above psychologically torturing someone to bend her to his will.
Kropadope
@JordanRules: “I agree with your sentiment, but want to be careful about granting the ‘terrorist’ boogey word any more power. Boston authorities dealt with the Marathon bombers using law enforcement techniques and it worked.”
Boston authorities dealt with the marathon bombers by shutting down the entire city, people cheered, it was AWFUL.
Emma
@Anoniminous: In a work environment, there is NO expectation of privacy. DO NOT use your work email for anything else than work, except for little exchanges (say, recipes) with another co-worker, and even then, keep it to a minimum. DO NOT use your phone for anything else than work, except maybe checking in with your family once a day or calling your doctor. ASSUME they are watching. Period.
Emma
@Kropadope: And if they hadn’t and more bombs had gone off everyone would be screaming their heads off at their failure to deal with “terrorists”. What we would love to forget is that for the majority of our countrymen security is way more important than freedom. With freedom comes uncertainty, and some level of danger, and they will turn like rabid weasels on anyone who even initiates the conversation.
A Humble Lurker
@El Cid:
If they wanted to shut ACORN down before that, and they had this apparatus going, they could’ve found some simple reason to do it. Accounting problems, what have you.
different-church-lady
@Kropadope: Yup. What we should have done during that whole guys-with-bombs-carjacking-hi-speed-chase thing was go about our business as though nothing dangerous was happening. And then the guys got caught. Yes, it we all thought it was just awful when that happened.
I sincerely hope that someday a Bostonian with a prosthetic leg chooses to beat some sense into your head with it.
JordanRules
@Kropadope: Point taken, but my point about terrorism, extra-judicial shit, wars and the like still stand. It was important as fuck that it was the police doing that and not the armed forces or Blackwater.
different-church-lady
@Emma: Oh now you gone and done cued up the Ben Franklin quote.
I can’t help but think ol’ Ben — once getting over the sheer gobsmacked state — would have had some fresh aphorisms to describe his 21st century fan base in less than flattering terms.
Emma
@different-church-lady: I’ve always liked him. The man had no illusions about humankind but it didn’t stop him from trying to change things for the better.
Comrade Dread
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-: It’s already happening. Drug use has not declined no matter how many folks we decide to throw in prison or how many constitutional protections we give up in the name of keeping some people from getting high.
So why not bring it out into the open? Acknowledge the health risks, put appropriate regulation on the cultivation, manufacturing, and use and age restrictions, fund more rehab clinics so they’re effectively free for anyone that needs them, and treat drug addiction like a health issue rather than a legal one.
As I said, it’s not like prohibition has been a grand success in keeping people from getting high.
Kropadope
@different-church-lady: Whoa, whoa, whoa. There is a WORLD of difference between not doing anything to stop the bombers and shutting down the entire city. If memory serves me, we have stopped several such bombers before they blew anything up at all, without shutting down a major American city. After the fact, too. It works both ways. All they managed to do is make people pee their pants and maybe lose a billion dollars in the process.
Frankensteinbeck
I want to make sure. Everyone here knows that this is not a database of your recorded phone calls, right? It’s a list of what numbers called what numbers, for how long, when, and apparently nearest cell phone tower for mobile phones. It’s a really big difference, in terms of privacy.
Tripod
Who is John Galt?:
Nanny state! Socialism! Can I haz my freedumz!
the Conster
@different-church-lady:
I for one would love to read his tweets and FB posts about security, freedom and online privacy – would they be sent from his iPhone or Android?
Tripod
@Comrade Dread:
lojasmo
@me:
Actually, despite the disapportionate frequency of arrests among drug suspects of color, a majority of those arrested for both selling and possession of drugs are white.
(PDF)
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@losjamo:
I suspect those numbers have changed slightly in the interim. Those stats were established at a time when law enforcement was focused on crack cocaine. Now the problem is methamphetamines. While I’m sure that the percentage of blacks and hispanics arrested is still disproportionate, I’ll bet that they’re slightly less so today.
Stop-and-frisk isn’t about drugs, though. The excuse is weapons and violent crime. But it is an excuse, like the excuses made for DWB stops: Obstructed view, repair-and-report, failure to come to a complete stop, etc.. Either way, these stops do little-to-nothing to stem violent crime or traffic accidents. They are tools used to let people of color know who’s the boss where- and if the person stopped doesn’t like that, there are charges like obstruction or resisting arrest ready to be made.
Ted & Hellen
@Kropadope:
This is a lie, among the many told here every day by Botsplainers.
I live in Boston. The “shut down” was entirely voluntary. People were urged, asked, and encouraged to stay home and otherwise indoors, but at no point was there a mandatory prohibition against being outside or driving anywhere we wanted to go. There was no threat of legal repercussions of any kind for moving about freely.
The “shut down” was entirely cooperative; people generally wanted to see the bombers caught and any excuse to stay home from work is generally welcome. We knew they were armed and dangerous, had killed a young MIT security guy, and we knew they could be anywhere in town, which they ended up being, in a residential neighborhood inside a dude’s boat, hello?
Again, this trope that Boston was SHUT DOWN by the authorities is bullshit. Which is why Kropadope is spewing it.
Kropadope
@JordanRules: Oh, no question. Keeping various arms of state power to their particular proscribed role is certainly important. Nearly as important as keeping unaccountable mercenary contractors out of those roles. I wonder if we ever got our states’ National Guards back from Iraq.
@Ted & Hellen: Voluntary or not, it sets a bad precedent. When I lived in Boston, I don’t recall being instructed to cower in fear inside my house because known killers were still on the loose. The West, Texas fertilizer plant explosion killed more people than they did and Texas and America didn’t even blink, let alone form a policy response to corporegulatory negligence, another huge problem of its own. I don’t know what it is about explosions that they merit responses far disproportionate to their real-world impact. (See also: PATRIOT Act)
the Conster
@Kropadope:
I hate hate HATE to agree with T&H, but he’s right about the situation in Boston after the bombings. No one was instructed to cower inside their houses, and anyone who wanted to or had to go out, did. The governor did ask residents in Watertown to keep their garage doors and gates to backyards unlocked, and/or open since that’s where the police lost track of the car involved in the shoot out, and the bombers had already carjacked an innocent bystander who had to run for his life. Stop talking about something you know shit about.
different-church-lady
@the Conster:
Does feel weird, doesn’t it?
different-church-lady
@Kropadope:
Yes, this Marathon Bombing situation was handled so differently from all the other Marathon Bombing situations.
The fuckin’ fertilizer plant didn’t go on an all night-long car-jacking, cop killing spree.
Are. You. Actually. This. Dumb. (Note lack of question mark.)
lojasmo
@Ted & Hellen:
Submitting proof not in evidence, given that Zimmerman was never made to give testimony under oath, dipshit.
different-church-lady
@Kropadope: “Hi there. I’m Governor Deval Patrick. As many of you know, earlier this week someone set off a set of bombs at one of our major annual events. Three people lost their lives and many others lost their limbs. After a week of uncertainty, we believe we have identified those responsible, and those people have committed a carjacking and are now in the process of fleeing from the police. We believe them to be armed with explosives, we know they are willing to kill, and we do not know where they might go next.
“Therefore, in my capacity as governor, I would like to order the citizens of Boston and the surrounding communities to go about their business as though nothing unusual were going on. While this may, in fact, put you in the path of utterly unpredictable danger and inhibit the movement of police attempting to apprehend these dangerous maniacs, it is vastly important that we put on a show of irrational indifference to the events around us, so that left-wing internet cranks cannot accuse us of cowering while they witness these events from afar on their television screens. I thank you, and god bless the citizens of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
When four armed suspects fled from a car on the freeway near our offices, the police shut down the entire office complex and checked everyone going in and out until they found all four. (One of them took a while — he was hiding in a nearby resident’s garage.)
But I guess they should have just let us all go about our business and possibly be carjacked/taken hostage by one of the armed suspects because FREEDOM!
Kropadope
@different-church-lady: “Yes, this Marathon Bombing situation was handled so differently from all the other Marathon Bombing situations.”
What about non-marathon bombings? Car chases? Shootouts? Rapists? Assorted serial killers? Don’t be dense.
“The fuckin’ fertilizer plant didn’t go on an all night-long car-jacking, cop killing spree.”
There are any number of ticking time bomb businesses that are allowed to go on cutting corners and shielding themselves from liability due to our 30-year-long fanatical deregulatory spree.
@different-church-lady: “Hi there. I’m Governor Deval Patrick. etc.”
What about “be alert, be careful, report any suspicious activity, don’t take any unnecessary risks, be sure to stay informed as the situation develops?”
@the Conster: “No one was instructed to cower inside their houses, and anyone who wanted to or had to go out, did.”
Yet, we’re treated to photos in the Boston Globe of city streets looking like a ghost town on a weekday afternoon.
Many many many terrorists have been found and caught, even prevented before succeeding, by normal law enforcement procedures. There are certainly times when it’s appropriate to instruct people to try to stay home, but to just blithely accept every advancement of the national security state without so much as a public debate, or talking about how the decision was arrived at, or trying to determine a legitimate standard by which this sort of thing should be done is scary. It was greeted by silence from our politicians and cheers from the security uber alles crowd.
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
How many of those caught through “normal law enforcement procedures” were running around the streets carjacking innocent people and getting into shootouts with police?
I’m not sure why FREEDOM! means that cops are not allowed to give public safety instructions when armed criminals are actively carjacking people. Are the police not supposed to inform the public of those things because it might cause people to stay home?
different-church-lady
@Kropadope: FUCKING CARJACKERS WITH BOMBS, HOW DO THEY WORK?
the Conster
@Kropadope:
What the fuck is wrong with you? How hard is it to understand that the good people of Boston actually were interested in (a) not being a part of the bomber’s escape plan, and (b) helping the police catch the bombers by participating in a collective action to stay out of the way, because EVERYONE WAS FUCKING PISSED OFF AT THE BOMBERS WHO WERE ON THE LOOSE IN THE AREA, NOT THE COPS. Jeebus, you’re a clown.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: I never said they shouldn’t do anything about this, that they should carry on like nothing was happening. They can engage in their normal law-enforcement procedures and request compliance from people in specific locations where they are investigating in any way. But this was a policy response that I think was disproportionate to the threat at hand. Maybe sometimes it is the best available action for the state to take, maybe it even was the best thing they could have done that day, but if it was the right thing to do, why can’t we develop policies to make sure this is done in a responsible, transparent way? Why can’t we establish guidelines under which this is an acceptable response?
The first rule of the national security state is that you don’t question the national security state.
Kropadope
@the Conster: What is wrong with you? Far, far more dangerous people have been free in or near major American cities without this kind of response. This is just a classic example of “Be afraid of THEM, vote for US!!!”
the Conster
@Kropadope:
You’re like an automatic left wing idiotic meme generating program. You’d fail a Turing test.
Kropadope
Man, earlier I was a Republican, now I’m a left winger, everyone with their labels, jeez. Heh, still far beats arguing with Libertarians whether there should even be a police force or state (every level).
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
Given that people who actually live in Boston all say that this was a completely voluntary request made by the police that no one was punished for not obeying, I’m not sure what “policy” you think should have been in place instead of, “We’d like people to stay home, if that’s okay.”
If the most frightening example of police state overreach you can come up with is a request for people to stay home voluntarily when they’re actively looking for two armed and dangerous suspects, you need to get out more.
But I’ll tell you what. The next time your local police say, “Hey, there’s an armed and dangerous criminal somewhere in your neighborhood, so you may want to stay home,” feel free to take the dogs for a walk. Heck, take your toddler with you, too. But don’t come whining to us about how the police didn’t protect you properly if you do run into the bad guy. Deal?
(Edited for clarity.)
Kropadope
Neighborhood< Office Park < City. What would have happened if, after a period of time had elapsed, it was established that the suspects had left the city, whereabouts unknown? Do we suggest everyone in every town in the neighboring counties stays home, then the state, then everyone from NH to CT? Why don't we do this for someone who kills/injures even more people with a gun?
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: “If the most frightening example of police state overreach you can come up with is a request for people to stay home voluntarily when they’re actively looking for two armed and dangerous suspects, you need to get out more.”
They’re trying to create a climate of fear and acceptance of ideas like lockdowns and curfews.
Mnemosyne
@Kropadope:
I’m kind of amazed that you’ve managed to get to adulthood without ever having had to deal with this kind of situation in your own life. Short answer: no. None of the above. They put out an APB (you know what that means, right?) and ask citizens and police to keep an eye out for suspects of X description.
Yes, the only possible reason the police had for closing down our office park when they had four armed suspects somewhere in the vicinity was to create a climate of fear and acceptance. I’m sure those four armed suspects totally wouldn’t have hurt any civilians they came across. Good one.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: “Yes, the only possible reason the police had for closing down our office park when they had four armed suspects somewhere in the vicinity was to create a climate of fear and acceptance. I’m sure those four armed suspects totally wouldn’t have hurt any civilians they came across. Good one.” An office park is way smaller than a city. Maybe a city block or two.
LAC
@kc: it would take a lot to suck the air out of the hot air and windbaggery that comes every time we get a post about GASP! your phone and email blah blah and the tiny chance that anyone in the government gives a fuck about your phone calls
LAC
@different-church-lady: is this motherfucker serious? Wow…
Drexciya
@Cacti
I love Cacti. Please keep it up.
The disproportion of these threads is reflective of this blog’s priorities. The broad inattention accorded to issues of actual, physical and sometimes fatal threats to non-white bodies is reflective of this blog’s assumed demographics. They think they can talk about this all the time because whiteness creates and then centralizes an echo chamber that makes its own considerations the only consideration. That’s why we can have twenty threads about why liberals aren’t sufficiently Serious And Pure for not quaking over hypothetical, fabricated, libertarian-coded federal threats, but God forbid we have more than one or two threads about whole demographics being targeted by states for impoverishing property seizure. Or pregnant black women getting suplex’d by cops. Meaningful empathy is only supposed to go in one direction.
Rob in DC
Lol, what a shithole Balloon-Juice has become, it actually degenerates more and more each time I wander here. This is so fun to watch, like a slow motion train wreck.
Rex Everything
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
SADLY, NO.
Rex Everything
@Ted & Hellen: No way, you dipshits shut yourselves in VOLUNTARILY?
London kept the dance halls open during the blitz, but Bostonians hid under the table because of a pressure cooker!
Jesus Christ. Go Yankees.