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.
The notion of "walling off" information apparently also extends to court testimony and the prosecution brief:
"However, when the mention of Hemisphere data in official documentation or court testimony is unavoidable ... Hemisphere analysts might advise the investigator on issues such as report writing, presentation to the prosecutor, and the trial phase." (p14)
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.
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.
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"
'Anyone who supports the war on drugs has abandoned liberty and freedom.'
Terms like "the rule of law" encourage a mentality that's unempathetic and unconcerned with many forms of tyranny and suffering. It encourages complicit behavior through blind allegiance and rhetoric. That allegiance will probably remain until the faithful are personally affected and destroyed by the rule of law they so thought they knew.
The rule of law is a process that should be (and usually isn't) viewed as deserving of great distrust, fear, and delicacy rather than of great admiration and worship. The largest atrocities and cruelest of societies may happen due to the rule of law. The United States' Bill of Rights is not enough. Legitimacy doesn't fear it. Meaning is created. Meaning overrides meaning. Freedom and free speech may be eternal flames in the hearts of free minds. I hope that will always be so. Legitimacy, meanwhile, paves a path with new terms while nationalists are left clinging to the rule of law.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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:
This is a database of call detail records (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?
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.
Subscriber data is easily matched, as mentioned in the slides. It advises law enforcement officers and other judicial officials to perjure themselves. There have been enough discussions about the value of metadata for identifying people that one should have an opinion by now as to whether it is a violation of one's rights for the gov't to collect it indiscriminately.
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.
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.
[+] [-] salmonellaeater|11 years ago|reply
When a complete set of CDRs are subpoenaed from the carrier, then all memorialized references to relevant and pertinent calls can be attributed to the carrier's records, thus "walling off" the information obtained from Hemisphere. In other words, Hemisphere can easily be protected if it is used as a pointer system to uncover relevant numbers.
[+] [-] jamesk_au|11 years ago|reply
"However, when the mention of Hemisphere data in official documentation or court testimony is unavoidable ... Hemisphere analysts might advise the investigator on issues such as report writing, presentation to the prosecutor, and the trial phase." (p14)
Just extraordinary.
[+] [-] CamperBob2|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] gojomo|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tptacek|11 years ago|reply
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph...
Obviously, this is deeply fucked up.
[+] [-] eli|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NotAtWork|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kavabean|11 years ago|reply
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
Where the "opulent" are the class from which the framers originated.
This is not a new development.
[+] [-] aric|11 years ago|reply
'Anyone who supports the war on drugs has abandoned liberty and freedom.'
Terms like "the rule of law" encourage a mentality that's unempathetic and unconcerned with many forms of tyranny and suffering. It encourages complicit behavior through blind allegiance and rhetoric. That allegiance will probably remain until the faithful are personally affected and destroyed by the rule of law they so thought they knew.
The rule of law is a process that should be (and usually isn't) viewed as deserving of great distrust, fear, and delicacy rather than of great admiration and worship. The largest atrocities and cruelest of societies may happen due to the rule of law. The United States' Bill of Rights is not enough. Legitimacy doesn't fear it. Meaning is created. Meaning overrides meaning. Freedom and free speech may be eternal flames in the hearts of free minds. I hope that will always be so. Legitimacy, meanwhile, paves a path with new terms while nationalists are left clinging to the rule of law.
[+] [-] unknown|11 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|11 years ago|reply
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|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dicroce|11 years ago|reply
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|11 years ago|reply
[1]http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|11 years ago|reply
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|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tomcam|11 years ago|reply
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|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] appleflaxen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabdib|11 years ago|reply
To hell with these people.
[+] [-] jnbiche|11 years ago|reply
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-...
They're starting small (parking tickets), but you have to start somewhere.
And there's lots of room for growth in the injustice sector.
[+] [-] yuvadam|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lambda|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sirn|11 years ago|reply
http://truth-out.org/news/item/26159-local-and-state-police-...
[+] [-] Theodores|11 years ago|reply
In the mainstream media, no less.
Here is the 'powerpoint':
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/782287/database.pdf
You have nothing to hide...
[+] [-] mixologic|11 years ago|reply
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|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakethedog|11 years ago|reply
It perverts the justice system when the police and prosecutors hide their investigation methods.
[+] [-] fnordfnordfnord|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sami_Lehtinen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jkn|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim333|11 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jellicle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rubbingalcohol|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flint|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] psychometry|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eli|11 years ago|reply