
Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf] - jakewalker
https://www.eff.org/files/2014/09/12/7-3-14_mr6608_res.pdf
======
salmonellaeater
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._

~~~
CamperBob2
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
... 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.

------
tptacek
This is a story NYT broke in 2013:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-
ph...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-
eclipsing-nsas.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0)

Obviously, this is deeply fucked up.

~~~
eli
Indeed, this seems to be a different (newer?) version of the same slide deck
the NYTimes published.

~~~
tptacek
The NYT seems to describe the slide deck, down to the case studies at the end.

~~~
eli
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-...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/02/us/hemisphere-
project.html)

------
NotAtWork
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
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
> 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.

~~~
kavabean
OK. Yes the framers of the constitution did create protections from the
government for themselves, and shared that with the rest of the population. As
you imply it is hard to know if the general case was a side-effect or original
intent.

At the same time they purposefully sought to disenfranchise the majority so
that they might change the rules at any time.

So the constitution within the constitution is that the government will
protect the wealthy, and that makes sense given who was writing it.

It appears that the ruling elites now value control of the population over
privacy. I see two possible explanations but perhaps there are others.

* They see the incredible growth of poverty in the US and there is no vast neighboring region in which to exterminate existing inhabitants and settle. Hence wealth protection from the masses is a higher priority than the privacy protections.

* Mass media has distorted the scale of the disenfranchising effects of our system (rich have more control and poor even less) and the wealthy realise they can use their control of the government to make huge fortunes. For example the profits of the banks are derived by transfer of wealth from taxpayers through implicit insurance since insurance allows highly profitable high risk strategies. They then choose short term profits over privacy / human rights.

In any case they choose to exercise their rights under the constitution within
the constitution to change the laws to bring about repression and control.

I'm not really rebutting your point here. Instead I want to highlight that
what is happening now IS consistent with the ideals of governance around
during the formation of the US and what has changed is likely a lower level
'priority'

------
droopyEyelids
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
Not very unlike the times of J.E Hoover. Just with more technology.

------
dicroce
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
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
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-pilot...](http://www.lepoint.fr/monde/la-vie-abracadabrante-d-un-pilote-d-
avion-trafiquant-de-drogue-11-03-2013-1638589_24.php)

~~~
coldtea
Some people are always surprised by well established facts half the world
knows about.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_traffic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_and_Contras_cocaine_trafficking_in_the_US)

------
DanielBMarkham
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
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.

------
tomcam
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
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...

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

------
kabdib
Writing my representative and senators now.

To hell with these people.

~~~
jnbiche
>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-...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-
tickets/)

They're starting small (parking tickets), but you have to start somewhere.

And there's lots of room for growth in the injustice sector.

~~~
HelloMcFly
Got it. Don't vote, don't attempt to hold elected officials accountable or
even let them know in tangible communications about what I feel. Give up and
disengage completely, educate other citizens on why they should give up and
disengage completely, put my money into my mattress (or a credit union, I
guess), and start a garden so I can feed myself. But where do I buy the
seeds!?

I say get more engaged, but be pragmatic and protect yourself emotionally. I
do believe that many, but not all, representatives would respond to increased
personal communication. All of my conversation with former DC staffers has
done nothing by reinforce this view for me.

But don't leave it there. Support causes you believe in, and if you can use
technology or commerce to enact change positive change then that's even
better.

~~~
kelvin0
On the contrary, he advocates a proactive approach to 'engage and inform other
citizens' and start having people stop relying on a broken system, instead of
taking responsibility for their actions and effectuating real change.

~~~
NotAtWork
The problem is that his analysis is weak: the reason that there are two
choices are because of people like him disengaging and not supporting a third
choice.

Further, it's not the case that actions like those done by the NSA happened in
a vacuum. The reality is that most of the country demanded, following one
stinging terrorist attack that this must never happened again. The men and
women of our military fulfilled that wish: at the cost of $20 billion a year,
they delivered to us most of the globe on a silver platter, completely
electronically dominated and ready to be watched to stop even a whiff of such
a threat.

That our social demands (in aggregate) are childish, insane, bipolar, etc
isn't their fault. They simply did what society demanded it needed to feel
safe, what they saw as their duty.

The simple truth is that the current state of affairs is exactly what we've
asked for, in large part, and that the most realistic way to reform it is to
engage with other citizens and help them understand why their contrary and
silly demands are contrary and silly.

All that pulling away from the political exchange will do is lead us down the
path of a civil war (or other turmoil) as people who refuse to be part of the
rule making also refuse to follow the rules.

~~~
b6
> the reason that there are two choices are because of people like him
> disengaging and not supporting a third choice

I think this is untrue, or at least not the major factor. First-past-the-post
voting seems to result inevitably in the situation the US finds itself in,
with two main parties with no significant differences on most major issues,
where voting for a third party candidate causes a spoiler effect.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo)

------
yuvadam
Can someone pleas provide further context for this doc?

~~~
lambda
Here's some more information: [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-
amicus-brief-urges...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/new-amicus-brief-
urges-court-order-criminal-discovery-surveillance-programs)

------
mixologic
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?

~~~
alexbecker
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
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.

------
Sami_Lehtinen
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.

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

~~~
tim333
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
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
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.

------
rubbingalcohol
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-
de...](http://blog.rubbingalcoholic.com/post/97508750503/how-the-dea-covers-
up-illegal-evidence-gathering)

------
flint
End the War on Drugs

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

~~~
eli
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
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
The original title was a quote from page 13. A very interesting quote, but
with very little context information.

~~~
dang
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.

