
AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs - mikeevans
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/att-gives-dea-26-years-of-phone-call-records-to-wage-war-on-drugs/
======
jivatmanx
This, the Parallel Construction story, and the Patriot act having been
principally used for the War on Drugs than terror... has made me consider that
the War on Drugs may actually be more dangerous to Liberty than the war on
terror.

No doubt it's basic premise, that putting a substance into one's own body is a
"crime", is a pernicious lie.

The War on Terror's pernicious lie is twofold: Terrorism isn't a crime, and
thus isn't subject to any laws, that this war is eternal, and the whole world
is a battlefield.

Certainly in practical effects the Drug war is worse: Minorities whose
communities are regularly raided by soldiers, depopulated, and placed into our
glorious, humane prison system with the highest incarceration rate in the
world, than stripped of voting rights and essentially blackballed from
employment afterwards, would think surely so...

My natural tendency has so far been to see the war on Terror as worse, this
may be me I, like many HNers with dissident political opinions, am more likely
to see myself as an actual target in the War on Terror. That, and being an
Orwell fan...

~~~
sharkweek
The Economist rants on this every couple of months, and I couldn't agree more.

The war on drugs is a terrible misstep. Drugs should never have been a
criminal issue, they should be strictly a public health issue. But we're far
too entrenched to make that change now.

Watch "The House I Live In" (streaming on Netflix) for a ridiculously detailed
picture of the problem

~~~
csmatt
"The House I Live In" was an eye opener for me. Also, one of the directors,
David Simon, is the creator of the HBO show 'The Wire' which dealt heavily
with the side effects of the war on drugs.

'The Wire' is the first thing I thought of when reading about this story.

------
tsotha
It doesn't surprise me the government would be able to find people swapping
out phones on a regular basis using this data.

I once worked in the fraud department of a major US mobile carrier. At that
time analog was on its last legs, and the new money-making opportunity was
bog-standard identity theft. People would sign up for new phones using stolen
information and then rent out minutes to immigrants from the back of a van
until we found them out and shut down the phone. We had a system that
"fingerprinted" usage patterns such that we knew with a fair degree of
certainty when a new account was fraudulent based on his usage patters and the
people he called.

I don't see any reason why the same technology wouldn't work to identify
criminals with boxes full of prepaid phones.

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

~~~
diydsp
Pressure against individuals: To put pressure on people to get them to do your
bidding. To compel people to turn up evidence on bigger fish or your family
members. To compel someone to be a patsy for a different crime. To compel
celebrities to come out in support of the security state.

Nationally (or bragging rights): To look good to other countries when we ask
for loans ("we're a secure nation- we could arrest all of these people if we
wanted to."). To negotiate with prison-building companies (untapped arrests
are potential prisons). To compel additional budgeting for high-tech crime-
fighting research and equipment. To inflate one party's credibility pre-
election ("we turned up all these bad guys."). As bargaining tokens in
international deals ("we'll turn in this bad guy of yours if you buy our
$million radar"). To bolster Big Pharma's stance that mass-narcotics are
necessary ("look how many people self-medicate with dangerous cannabis, they
should be taking prozac instead.").

~~~
mrinterweb
Yikes. I prefer to think that the government would not be that evil, but then
again, that's just me choosing ignorance/optimism over thinking about how bad
things could actually be.

------
joering2
Interesting to note here is that the ATT _gave_ those records "on its own",
versus being subpoena via DEA by a judge, something that 99% of judges in
their sound mind would have never ever ever agreed on, even in today's world.

I had a hard time believing that ATT would have done something like this out
of their own free will, as they would have never done anything that could
undermine their sales and bottom line (potentially) so severely.

I put "on its own" in quotes because knowing the way Government thugs are
conducting themselves, most likely the ATT had been heavily blackmailed under
the table this or another way and at some point they have given up (Wikipedia:
tyranny). Don't be surprised if in couple of years from now the administration
will change, and the management of ATT will change, and then you will see some
tiny PR-lawsuit surfacing that yes indeed ATT were pushed by DEA and now they
are "suing".

~~~
smsm42
I wouldn't be so sure AT&T didn't do it entirely on its own. In our crony
capitalism times, being friends with the Big Government is a very good
strategy for Big Business. Lobbying is the most profitable investment known to
man. If giving records to DEA means access to juicy government contracts or a
nice regulation that ensures the interests of AT&T are properly protected -
then bottom line comes out nicely. That provided anybody besides a handful of
geeks would actually care - after all, you'd never do something as vile and
disgusting as sell merchandise that the government does not approve, right? So
you have nothing to fear and there's no reason for concern at all.

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

~~~
TrainedMonkey
Just read article in depth and found two more significant "features". First
one - database build by AT&T can identify if target individual uses multiple
phones (So if say I was engineer Joe and wanted to get sell private cell
number(s) for Angelina Jolie how much would you pay?). Second - they can
identify if you switched to a new number. Even if you threw out your phone.
(So speaking of numbers, how much would you pay for a yearly subscription
previously offered 'product'). Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no
reason to believe that other providers do not.

~~~
metageek
>Seriously if AT&T doing this, there is no reason to believe that other
providers do not.

The article says AT&T has the data for any telco that uses AT&T switches. This
is a little odd, given that the company currently known as AT&T is not the
same company that used to manufacture switches; but, if this has been going on
for 26 years, I suppose the government would have insisted it continue across
corporate splits and mergers.

~~~
dragonwriter
IIRC, lots of other companies selling telecom use AT&T infrastructure
(infrastructure owned by AT&T now, not infrastructure built by a different
company called AT&T in the past.) There are a much greater number of companies
that you can buy local and long-distance service from than companies that
actually operate the physical infrastructure.

I suspect that current infrastructure is the "AT&T switches" that are relevant
here.

~~~
metageek
That makes more sense, thanks.

------
w0rd-driven
Now it makes me wonder what the turnover rate will be once all those drug
dealers learn that AT&T is bad for their business. I wonder if anyone is even
measuring those stats to know.

This is by far not free and I really wonder what AT&T is getting out of the
deal. They're devoting a small but significant amount of internal resources
for what? Does the DEA overlook their transgressions or just the CEO? I have a
hard time believing that AT&T would do this "out of the kindness of their
hearts." I wonder now that this is exposed and the real costs of this project
will come to bare if they'll keep it up. They certainly have enough money to
throw at it, though.

~~~
MichaelGG
A: The information AT&T is handing over covers far more than just their own
subscribers. They're also providing wholesale information, so even if you're
not an AT&T subscriber, your provider might eventually buy from AT&T, and
they'll get the call detail record for some of your calls anyways.

B: Is it known that the other major providers are not in on this just like
AT&T?

~~~
kordless
And moreover, calls to non-AT&T mobile users are in there. That means you are
in there if someone called you from AT&T and/or you called them on AT&T. With
a bit of legwork, you could reasonably infer phone number changes on non-AT&T
networks given the same people on AT&T and you kept calling each other after
your number change.

------
rdl
I think a total boycott of ATT would be a good start, since it appears ATT
actually was out in front of Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint on this. I'd
probably trust T-Mobile and Sprint more than either ATT or Sprint based on
corporate history, too. Still totally untrustworthy, but there probably is a
difference.

It's getting to the point where a good alternative to how cellphones work
might be worthwhile, to keep location data more confidential. A broadcast
"ping", and then some form of tunneled return connection, rather than routine
registration with location.

Doing it all in a way which doesn't touch PSTN and thus doesn't call under a
sane interpretation of CALEA, plus a provider willing to challenge the
constitutionality of CALEA and at minimum require full warrants for all
cooperation, probably would be a good deal better, too.

~~~
qwerty_asdf
Good luck. How do you boycott a backbone network provider thatmay ultimately
service your chosen ISP anyway?

Sure, you harm their consumer and residential retail operations, but that
won't cripple their business to business operations, which is where all the
real money is anyway.

~~~
dllthomas
Mesh networks?

~~~
zackmorris
I wish Hacker News had a wiki somewhere listing the most promising solutions
to the top issues hackers care about. So like, best off-the-shelf mesh network
hardware, best form of encryption, best $5 microcontroller with usb and/or
bluetooth and or wifi, stuff like that.

If I could just get these things cheaply and easily, I would gladly use them.
Right now so many of them seem more experimental than ubiquitous.

~~~
uxp
Reminds me of just after iOS6 was released under NDA in beta, and Apple had
their new Maps application. My wife and I were going somewhere at about 5PM
and I went to go check the traffic on the route we were headed towards, and
there wasn't a byte of data available to figure out what the traffic was like
since there were maybe a few dozen phones in a few square miles of where I was
that were running iOS6.

I'd be one of the first people in line to install a mesh network at my
residence and work, but it would be pretty useless unless there were others
contributing, else I'd have a pretty lonely network.

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

~~~
moens
...and for there to be a war on drugs in the first place. Eliminate the
fundamentals, and there should be no issues at all, really.

~~~
genwin
I have a problem with a war on marijuana, or violating the Constitution during
the war on drugs. But otherwise I don't have a problem with a war on meth or
crack or other drugs that increase the odds that I'll be a victim of violent
crime or robbery. (I'd punish simple users with rehab rather than prison.)

~~~
pstuart
No, no, no. Making them illegal makes more violent crime.

Let me put you in rehab for your coffee addiction or beer habit, ok?

~~~
genwin
Coffee addictions don't lead to more violent crime or robbery, as far as I
know.

Does making meth and crack legal make less crime (violent or robbery) than if
their usage was nil? I highly doubt it.

~~~
pstuart
80,000 deaths per year in the US attributed to alcohol:
[http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-
use.htm](http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm)

It's a dangerous drug. It makes people violent. People drink and drive and
kill people. Let's make it illegal too, eh?

Drug addiction is a health issue and should be treated as that. Making drugs
illegal CREATES MORE CRIME.

We could stop this madness if only people would STOP SUPPORTING THE MADNESS.

Sorry to shout, but I'm sure you're an otherwise intelligent individual, but
you are failing in this subject.

~~~
genwin
You seem to be assuming that a war on drugs must make them illegal. It
needn't. Instead the war could do whatever is most effective (per dollar
spent) at reducing usage. I support rehab for alcoholics, and measures to
reduce drunk driving. I don't support the war on drugs in its current form.

~~~
dragonwriter
> You seem to be assuming that a war on drugs must make them illegal. It
> needn't. Instead the war could do whatever is most effective (per dollar
> spent) at reducing usage.

You mean, it could be legalization, taxation, and using taxes to fund
intervention, referral, and treatment programs, and not be opposed to
legalization at all?

If so, then its obviously not what people supporting legalization are arguing
against when they are arguing againt _the_ War on Drugs.

~~~
genwin
Yes, that's consistent with my top-most comment in this thread, where I
describe a different, gentler and constitutional war on drugs.

I wouldn't stop at using the taxes from the sale of hard drugs to reduce their
usage. If spending $X against drug usage lead to $2X in net benefits, I'd
support spending $X no matter how much higher it was than those taxes.

A key component would be rehab, in which case it might be tough to make the
drug legal. Suppose crack is legal and so there's some parent high on crack
all day, providing only the most basic of care for the kids. If it takes
keeping crack illegal to legally force that parent into rehab, then I'd want
crack to stay illegal, but change the consequence to rehab.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Suppose crack is legal and so there's some parent high on crack all day,
> providing only the most basic of care for the kids.

If the "most basic care" is adequately meeting the society's minimums, this
obviously doesn't justify criminalization.

If it _doesn 't_, then child neglect can be made illegal (hint: it already
is), independently of whether it results from drug abuse.

> If it takes keeping crack illegal to legally force that parent into rehab

Compulsory-as-an-alternative-to-prison rehab obviously requires that
_something_ be illegal, but it doesn't require that the illegal thing be the
drug of abuse. Rehab as a condition of a suspended sentence could conceptually
be tied to any crime for which drug abuse was a contributing factor even if
the drug was legal (IIRC, this is sometimes done with alcohol in, e.g., the
context of DUI, even though alcohol is legal.)

So, the premise here that making the drug illegal might be essential to make
compulsory-as-an-alternative-to-prison rehab an available tool is simply
false.

~~~
genwin
> So, the premise here that making the drug illegal might be essential to make
> compulsory-as-an-alternative-to-prison rehab an available tool is simply
> false.

I accept that. I support whatever it takes as a minimum to get the person into
rehab, even if the minimum bar for parenting is raised so that crack addiction
doesn't reach it. If the majority of crack users could be model citizens while
high then my mind could be changed.

------
asn0
DEAT&T would have dominated the FTC RoboCall Challenge
[http://robocall.challenge.gov/](http://robocall.challenge.gov/) if they would
have entered. $50K to boot.

When a phone spammer uses fake Caller IDs, the FTC would subpoena the records
through DEAT&T to find out the real caller, then $fine$ them into oblivion.

Actually, AT&T should offer a service "WhoReallyJustCalledMe" so I can track
down and sue the spammers myself. I'd even pay a % of my winnings.

------
shawn-furyan
As a meta-commentary on this category of issues, I tend to be against these
sort of substance bans (PEDs[1] in sports is another timely example), and I
often see that people who support such measures tend to talk about what things
would be like if these substances were completely gotten rid of[2]. To me,
this is complete fantasy because there's never been a substance ban that has
been very effective at reducing usage of a popular substance, instead such
bans simply create black markets out of open markets. But when there's this
idea, mostly but not exclusively on the pro-criminalization side, that we can
completely stamp out markets where there is inelastic demand through
bans/criminalization and enforcement, then you get justifications for more and
more extreme measures from the enforcement side. In reality though, we tend to
see hugely diminishing returns accompanying these measures, and the numbers in
the article demonstrate these diminishing returns well (i.e. the program is
incredibly broad, yet the spoils being bragged about are incredibly paltry
compared to the size of the related markets).

The assumption that bans/criminalization can significantly reduce demand for
substances with inelastic demand is completely unreasonable given the track
record of such measures. For example, demand for PEDs in professional sports
is particularly inelastic because the rewards for even marginal increases in
performance are so high and the penalties are so rare and low as to easily be
subsidized by the increased salary resulting from use of PEDs, not to mention
the cognitive and social biases that favor optimizing short-term over long-
term performance.

In discussing such issues, I think that actual outcomes of previous and
current banning/criminalization policies has to start being favored as the
baseline effect of future policies rather than this pie in the sky idea that
these sort of policies can have at or near 100% efficacy. Then perhaps we can
move on from the inane moralizing that tends to accompany such discussions to
a point where we can have results oriented discourse grounded in reality on
these topics.

[1]Performance Enhancing Drugs, actually used more broadly to label all
performance enhancing substances including human hormones and blood
oxygenation.

[2]this really isn't a straw man, I've been involved in a few discussions in
the last couple months in which the ban/criminalization proponents (about 4 or
so different people) were arguing their position from the assumption that
bans/criminalization can lead to reduction of substance usage to negligible
levels.

[edited to fix formatting and to clarify footnote 1]

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

~~~
shawn-furyan
Puritanical stuffiness seems to be popular in domestic policy. Coffee is my
vice of choice, but I personally don't begrudge others their own, whether or
not they wound up on the legal or illegal side of the game of substance ban
musical chairs. That being said, and I'm not going to push this point too
hard, there is a counterpoint to the relationship of drugs to the arts in that
we've seen a lot of tragedy come out of that relationship as well. I wouldn't
presume to tell people what they can and can't use, but I likewise wouldn't
deny that there are both positive and negative effects of using such
substances. I take from your comment though the idea that we overwhelmingly
emphasize the negative aspects of substance use/abuse. Obviously people enjoy
them, but that never seems to come up.

------
quahada
This "dropped phone" search in interesting. This could be the most dangerous
aspect of this program.

Chances are little scientific research was done on the accuracy. What is the
false positive rate? Are there policies and procedures in place to determine
if the phones actually matched the individual? This can't be done without the
voice data.

Are the analysts savvy enough about the limitation of the underlying
algorithms?

If these questions have not been addressed, it's possible innocent people have
been prosecuted.

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

------
aet
Burner phones?

~~~
jacobquick
They call non-smartphones 'feature phones' and unlike 3g network phones, they
all have gps as part of the CDR. LTE has it as well, only 3g doesn't. 3g
network stuff uses old PPoE because phone companies are lazy.

~~~
MichaelGG
You're saying every low-end phone has GPS active, then gets and transmits a
fix for every phone call?

~~~
lutusp
No, it doesn't work that way -- it's actually rather ingenious. It turns out
that a cell phone system can determine a phone's position with reasonable
accuracy by comparing its arrival times at different cell towers.

With two towers receiving a cell phone's signal, the phone can be located
along a line. With three towers, it can be located as a point. It's all to do
with the cell signal's arrival time, and it's sort of like radar in reverse.

No GPS needed. A GPS-equipped phone provides more accurate positions, but the
passive cell-towers method is suitable for many applications.

[http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jp...](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3278/2867853394_7703d6c99f.jpg)

~~~
MichaelGG
Sure, and for 911 that's one thing. But the poster said _GPS_ is saved in the
CDRs, which is something I had not heard of. Otherwise it'd be best-of
triangulation if needed. And I was under the impression that was only done for
Phase 2 Wireless 911 calls. (And with far less accuracy than GPS.)

------
joeldidit
...yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa, that's why.

Not!

