DEA Lack of Data Storage Results In Dismissed Drug Case

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DEA Lack of Data Storage Results In Dismissed Drug Case

Posted by samzenpus on Monday August 20, 2012 @05:59AM from the wanna-borrow-a-flash-drive dept.

Nerval's Lobster writes "Dr. Armando Angulo was indicted in 2007 on charges of illegally selling prescription drugs. He fled the country in 2004, with the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and U.S. Marshals Service eventually finding him in Panama. As the case developed (and Panama resisted calls to extradite Angulo back to the United States), the DEA apparently amassed so much electronic data that maintaining it is now a hardship; consequently, the government wants to drop the whole case. 'These materials include two terabytes of electronic data (which consume approximately 5 percent of DEA's world-wide electronic storage capacity),' Stephanie M. Rose, the U.S. attorney for northern Iowa, wrote in the government's July motion to dismiss the indictment. 'Continued storage of these materials is difficult and expensive.' In addition, information associated with the case had managed to fill 'several hundred boxes' of paper documents, along with dozens of computers and servers. As pointed out by Ars Technica, if two terabytes of data storage represents 5 percent of the DEA's global capacity, then the agency has only 40 terabytes worth of storage overall. That seems quite small for a law enforcement agency tasked with coordinating and pursuing any number of drug investigations at any given time."

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Dismiss every drug case by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-20 05:59 · Score: 4, Insightful

The war on drugs is a disaster. Decriminalize all drugs, since that is the only thing that leads to a decrease in drug use and an increase in treatment.
1. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Jeng · 2012-08-20 06:17 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The fewer people sent to prison for drug crimes the better.
  
  --
  Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
2. Re:Dismiss every drug case by jbeaupre · 2012-08-20 06:32 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Did you even read the summary? It has nothing to do with illegal drugs. It's about illegally selling prescription (legal) drugs.
  They guy was selling to people that didn't have a prescription.
  
  --
  The world is made by those who show up for the job.
3. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Mr.CRC · 2012-08-20 06:50 · Score: 5, Interesting
  
  The problem is that "decriminalization" just means that users don't get punished, or just get a fine for possessing less than some threshold of substance. But the manufacturing and distribution are still illegal. Therefore the criminal black market is still incentivized to exist, along with its violence and the leech government entities that try to stop it and who's jobs depend on retaining this disgusting destructive relationship of illegality ensuring the profitability of illegal trafficking for drug dealers, and which ensures billions in government spending on the "War on Drugs" and employs hundreds of thousands of government employees.
  I am simply fed up with the whole thing. Let people do what they want. I have never, ever run into a "meth freak" or any other drug crazed person that threatened me. The really scary people are drunks.
  If just one stupid kid gets wasted on some drug like "bath salts" and gets killed (by accident, not directly from the drugs) then there are immediate calls to ban it. Well why the heck do we have "bath salts?" Because methamphetamine, MDMA, and cocaine are illegal! Yet they are much safer drugs with a long history of safety data and medical use! We know they are only harmful if you have a heart condition or if heavily abused. Well of course people are going to abuse them, but that's not my problem. At least if they are legal and you can buy them from a dispensary in pharmaceutical grade then we could benefit from:
  1. People can be educated out in the open what is a safe dose, how to keep up your nutrition and minimize harm to your health, and where to get help if you loose control of your use and need help to stop.
  2. Much of the damage to users that is actually caused by the IMPURITY of the drugs, the dirty needles, and the unhealthy lifestyles etc., will be eliminated or reduced. Perhaps we can even develop more quick acting oral drugs so that people will be less inclined to inject to get the same effects.
  3. We can supply people with opiate antidote drugs to protect themselves in case of accidental overdose.
  4. The risk of overdose will be much much lower since the purity will not vary.
  5. The cost of treatment programs could be miniscule compared to criminalization and interdiction.
  6. The black market and all it's innocent bystanders caught in the cross fire will be eliminated.
  7. The price of the drugs will be 5-10x lower, making the theft crime needed for unemployed addicts to support their habits will be proportionally lower.
  8. Many more addicts who were unemployable due to prohibition might be able to manage a "functional addict" lifestyle--remaining employed and productive members of society.
  9. Medical research into safer and more effective anti-depressants, sleep aids, stimulants, and other psychoactive drugs could be dramatically accelerated.
  The criminal black market and all its violence is what scares me. Not dope fiends. I'm personally morally committed to a drug abuse free lifestyle. My family and I don't even drink alcohol. But I'm just so sick of this prohibition crap.
  The economy might even benefit from people using stimulants carefully and in non-abusive quantities. The classic drugs such as amphetamine really aren't all that bad, despite all the propaganda and the fact that on the street they are filled with potentially toxic contaminants!.
  For those of you with an environmental inclination, look at some videos of how cocaine is extracted in the Amazon jungles, and what is done with the chemical waste. This is real tear-jerking stuff. It's just so disgusting and sad. Yet, if it were legal, then all of this could be done in the open by modern companies following international environmental standards, employing people in 9-5 jobs, who could pay taxes and live normal happy lives.
  Now for the bad news: Prohibition is never, ever going to end. It's just too much of a wonderful bonanza for the state.
4. Re:Dismiss every drug case by EdIII · 2012-08-20 06:53 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  To be fair this guy is selling prescription drugs illegally.
  That's like protected by copyrights and patents and shit. If he was selling coke or heroin to kids that might be one thing, but now he is messing the very fabric of our economy!
5. Re:Dismiss every drug case by DoofusOfDeath · 2012-08-20 06:55 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  Because if the police were to stop him with deadly or non-deadly force, the risk of me getting sued or going to jail is close to nil.
  If I were to do it, the risk is considerably higher.
6. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Jeng · 2012-08-20 06:57 · Score: 2
  
  As long as he was monitoring the health and mental well being of those he was prescribing drugs to then that is pretty much the model of legalizing drugs that I support.
  
  --
  Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
7. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Forty+Two+Tenfold · 2012-08-20 06:59 · Score: 2
  
  The problem is that "decriminalization" just means that users don't get punished, or just get a fine for possessing less than some threshold of substance. But the manufacturing and distribution are still illegal.
  Grow. Netherlands, Czech Republic, Spain, Portugal, ehh... Heroin clinics in Switzerland, uh... And this whole headline? I think real life stack overflow, not ENOSPC or EFBIG.
  
  --
  Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
8. Re:Dismiss every drug case by mcgrew · 2012-08-20 07:01 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Decriminalization is NOT the answer. If we'd simply decriminalized alcohol in 1933 rather than outright legalizing it, we'd still have the bar bombings etc we had when it was completely illegal.
  Legalize it and the gangs and gang violence goes away, the prices drop drastically so maybe that crackhead doesn't have to burglarize your house for his crack, etc.
  If someone wants to shoot heroin, let him shoot heroin. Your drug use is not my business. If you have to steal to support your habit, it's your theivery that's my business when you rob me, not your drug habit.
  However, there is one class of drugs I would keep illegal -- antibiotics. Your illicit use of heroin doesn't affect me, but your use of antibiotics breeds supergerms which DO affect me.
  Don't decriminalize it -- legalize it, regulate it, and tax it. I have a acquaintence who is a crack addict, she was surprised to find when she checked into rehab that there was not only cocaine in her system, but meth as well. Back in the '70s they used to dust pot with PCP. Regulation will keep adulterants out of dope, the dope they're doing is bad enough.
  Lagalizing alcohol worked well. Yes, we still have alcoholics, but a lot lower percentage of teenagers are drinking now than in 1925.
  
  --
  Free Martian Whores!
9. Re:Dismiss every drug case by CanHasDIY · 2012-08-20 07:16 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Because if the police were to stop him with deadly or non-deadly force,
  Point #1: The police will arrive too late to save you. Also, as the SCOTUS decided, protecting you is not their job, anyway.
  
  the risk of me getting sued or going to jail is close to nil.
  If I were to do it, the risk is considerably higher.
  Point #2: Dead men tell no tales; get a gun (and, of course, learn how to use it).
  
  --
  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
10. Re:Dismiss every drug case by h5inz · 2012-08-20 07:29 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Meth (speed) is a prescription drug for example: Methamphetamine is FDA approved for the treatment of ADHD and exogenous obesity. It is dispensed in the USA under the trademark name Desoxyn.
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine
11. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-20 08:06 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  When seconds count the police are but minutes away.
  http://www.firearmsandliberty.com/kasler-protection.html
  "Two women were upstairs in a townhouse when they heard their roommate, a third woman, being attacked downstairs by intruders. They phoned the police several times and were assured that officers were on the way. After about 30 minutes, when their roommate's screams had stopped, they assumed the police had finally arrived. When the two women went downstairs they saw that in fact the police never came, but the intruders were still there. As the Warren court graphically states in the opinion: "For the next fourteen hours the women were held captive, raped, robbed, beaten, forced to commit sexual acts upon each other, and made to submit to the sexual demands of their attackers."
  The three women sued the District of Columbia for failing to protect them, but D.C.'s highest court exonerated the District and its police, saying that it is a "fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen." [4] There are many similar cases with results to the same effect. [5] "
  You are responsible for protecting yourself and your family. Any questions?
12. Re:Dismiss every drug case by jeffmeden · 2012-08-20 08:09 · Score: 2
  
  There should be doctors who specialize in non-medical drugs. In order to purchase drugs you will need to go to a doctor and get ok'd for specific drugs, you then get a card allowing you to purchase said drugs. If you do not go back for quarterly check-ups your card will be revoked.
  If a significant portion of people who use currently illegal drugs go this route then there will not be enough of a market for illegal suppliers.
  Sure there is. When this un-doctor (prescribing you drugs to make you less healthy) is required to report the use to the insurance companies, after they realize there is a pretty solid correlation with legal blow and heart attacks (or whatever) and want to jack rates for any confirmed users. Black markets will always be around since there are many undeniably negative trade-offs to recreational drug use, and therefore benefits to concealing their use will always be present.
13. Re:Dismiss every drug case by jeffmeden · 2012-08-20 08:16 · Score: 2, Informative
  
  Decriminalization is NOT the answer. If we'd simply decriminalized alcohol in 1933 rather than outright legalizing it, we'd still have the bar bombings etc we had when it was completely illegal.
  Legalize it and the gangs and gang violence goes away, the prices drop drastically so maybe that crackhead doesn't have to burglarize your house for his crack, etc.
  If someone wants to shoot heroin, let him shoot heroin. Your drug use is not my business. If you have to steal to support your habit, it's your theivery that's my business when you rob me, not your drug habit.
  However, there is one class of drugs I would keep illegal -- antibiotics. Your illicit use of heroin doesn't affect me, but your use of antibiotics breeds supergerms which DO affect me.
  Don't decriminalize it -- legalize it, regulate it, and tax it. I have a acquaintence who is a crack addict, she was surprised to find when she checked into rehab that there was not only cocaine in her system, but meth as well. Back in the '70s they used to dust pot with PCP. Regulation will keep adulterants out of dope, the dope they're doing is bad enough.
  Lagalizing alcohol worked well. Yes, we still have alcoholics, but a lot lower percentage of teenagers are drinking now than in 1925.
  It's been beaten to death (working on a pun here) but those with a drug habit ended up there in a lot of cases because they were already destitute and making crack $1 a hit instead of $10 a hit isn't going to make them less likely to want to steal to get it... they don't have a job and legalizing it won't change that. Drug use, joblessness, homelessness, mental illness, burglary, violence, and emergency health care are all tightly intertwined. The first 3 might be easy to ignore but the last 4 are *your* problem as a member of a first world country. The solution is not to simply take away the criminal atmosphere surrounding issue #1...
  As a student of Economics, I admit that this is appealing and possibly beneficial if part of a larger solution, but only if.
14. Re:Dismiss every drug case by RajivSLK · 2012-08-20 08:28 · Score: 2
  
  Exactly. But your problem is largely due to inconsistent tax regimes in neighbouring states. Nobody is manufacturing cigarettes - that would be much more difficult. In Canada we have much higher taxes on alcohol and cigarettes than the US does, however, smuggling for resale is almost nonexistent.
15. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Mr.CRC · 2012-08-20 08:32 · Score: 2
  
  It should be legal. And you should be liable if something happens. Unless you entered into a contract to waive it. But lawyers are expensive. And small scale production isn't likely to be the primary production paradigm. It may also not be legal according to zoning laws. And if it can be bought legally, people won't flaunt even little laws to make it since there will be no profit in it! But fundamentally, it is not necessary to criminalize small scale production in order to ensure that most of the drugs used will be pharmaceutical grade.
  By the very nature of abused drugs, there will be a need for users to sign a waiver of rights to sue if they have an adverse medical reaction to taking whatever when they buy it from the drug store. Also, just like a good bartender will cut someone off if they get too smashed, it is possible that in the internet era pharmacies will simply cut off users who look like they are over-doing it. Sure some other unscrupulous sellers will enable such addicts (it could be a bonanza for the elderly), but the point is that social pressure to not be a junkie can be developed through means other than criminalization. But perfection is not attainable, so the rights of the rest of us don't deserve to be trampled to try to achieve an unobtainable goal of no drug abuse.
  What is good enough are laws against fraud, if only someone would enforce them. If a pharma. co. commits fraud and someone gets hurt because of a contaminant, then they may be sued for fraud, and perhaps criminal fraud or negligence charges as well.
  But the regulation that you are promoting only leads to monopoly and corruption, ultimately leading to the sort of situation where the companies can PROTECT themselves from fraud and other liabilities, because the regulators will just "settle" with them--like the way the crook bankers can rip us off these days, then "settle" later for pennies on the dollar of profit.
  Micro-breweries are personal-scale drug manufacturing labs. Do you really want to put them out of business?
  Are people dropping like flies from tainted nutritional supplements that fall under (justifiably so) a much less strict regulatory regime than pharmaceuticals? No.
  Good grief, people presently abusing street drugs prepared from gasoline, in rusty cans, with no lab tests or controls, and you are worried that if legalized and sold by legitimate companies all of the sudden the drugs will become of questionable safety?
  What's the difference from food preparation? What you are proposing should apply to anything prepared for human consumption--if you want to be logically consistent about it. Do you propose that every restaurant needs to get FDA approval to operate after spending millions of $$$ on years of studies? Ever been to Thailand? Barely any regulation, and I've never gotten sick. Millions of people eat street vendor food for their entire lives. They are nearly as heathy as here in the "1st world."
  There is an interesting YouTube video documentary on herion addiction. In it a large scale distributor says that he prefers people get their dope from him because he knows it's quality is good and they will be safe. You see, most business people just don't want to hurt their customers. Even criminal ones. Don't believe Marxist propaganda. It's just as wrong as anti-drug propaganda.
16. Re:Dismiss every drug case by blackest_k · 2012-08-20 08:39 · Score: 2
  
  Why would you want a drug without a prescription? Ok some people want to get high but others maybe it is just the cost.
  I have to take around 9 drugs everyday for the rest of my life currently the cost is subsidised but if it wasn't I might well find this Doctor saving me a fortune, To be frank I go to my GP for a signature for a prescription decided by specialists at the Hospital 6 of these are unlikely to change as I don't see the cardiac specialist any more.
  I can only sympathise with American's without Health Insurance who are being held captive by a system which exists first and foremost to make a profit from illness. Admittedly the drugs supplied could be fake as in not containing what they are supposed to contain but if you can't afford the drugs you need to keep you alive by the "Legal" route, it is a risk that you could be forced to take.
  
  --
  Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
17. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Jeng · 2012-08-20 08:40 · Score: 2
  
  Black markets will always be around since there are many undeniably negative trade-offs to recreational drug use, and therefore benefits to concealing their use will always be present.
  
  If you can remove 90% of the volume of what goes though the black markets then you will severely cripple the black markets reducing their prevalence to the point that it will be very hard to even find people who know where to get what.
  
  --
  Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
18. Re:Dismiss every drug case by Electricity+Likes+Me · 2012-08-20 09:43 · Score: 4, Interesting
  
  You're conflating the consequences of many of the things surrounding drugs (illegality, expense) with the actual consequences of taking drugs. People who drink alcohol have done far more damage to my property then drug users ever have.
  If we're so concerned about the effects of drugs on society (we're evidently not but whatever) then we could just subsidize them into being free, and let people go and do them in supervised zones. Sydney has one of Australia's only Heroin injecting rooms - for example. Now, they don't supply the heroin, but they do supply safe, clean needles and syringes, disposal facilities for them, access to medical help and access to counselling for those who want to quit the habit. The result? A massive decrease in used needles in the streets, which are what present the actual public health hazard.
  People on heroin are pretty docile. Most of their damage is robberies committed to try and get more heroin. But heroin isn't expensive to produce, whereas enforcing it is. If we also just gave them heroin, then that's about the cheapest possible way to solve the problem.
19. Re:Dismiss every drug case by HornWumpus · 2012-08-20 09:47 · Score: 2
  
  Pot is more or less legal in CA. My last three years crops have been visible on Google earth. It's a safe bet that illegal traffic has been reduced 90% by volume.
  Tweak/Tweakers are still everywhere. Rich ones are the worst.
  
  --
  John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
20. Re:Dismiss every drug case by rahvin112 · 2012-08-20 11:28 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  In my state if they broke into my home I'm legally allowed to kill them. Their intent is irrelevant as the law allows me to assume they are there to kill me and to act accordingly.
  In particular I remember the story of an older gentleman. A 19 year old man broke into the house through the sliding glass door in the middle of the night. The older gentleman in question was woken by the break-in and armed himself with a firearm. He heard the intruder approaching on the stairs and shot a single shot through the wall (without any warning) and the 19 year old fled. After the police arrived and searched they found the 19 year olds body about 50' from the house dead from a gunshot wound to the chest. The older gentleman was never charged or even threatened with indictment.
  In fact just last year the legislature made it impossible for intruders to sue (although they likely couldn't win they could have still sued previously) homeowners due to injury they sustain in the act of a crime, including being shot.
21. Re:Dismiss every drug case by rahvin112 · 2012-08-20 11:46 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  Homeless addicts are the exception not the rule and it's foolish to even suggest they are the stadnard (though it's a fun talking point the DEA uses).
  There are estimates ranging from 8% to 10% of the population uses illicit drugs regularly. An even larger percentage in excess of 50% has tried an illicit drug in their lifetime. The vast majority of those people are perfectly stable users with employment and families.
  Alcohol is a far worse drug than nearly every other illicit drug. Cigarettes are far more addictive than nearly every other illicit drug. Yet both are legal, the first because a ban was tried and it caused consumption to sky rocket and violence to explode, the second is legal due to economic dependence on not only the production but the sale.
  Just like Alcohol prohibition legalization will remove the blackmarket, improve safety, reduce violence/crime and provide tax revenue to the government to support the negative side effects.
  The war on drugs has created a police and prison apparatus that costs the tax payers close to 12 billion a year. What has the war on drugs done to personal liberty? Well for one the government now has incentive to go after individual users because they can then seize their assets. In fact, the system incentives going after users and leaving the dealers alone. We have more than a million people in jail that never committed a violent act and are in jail simply for possession of drugs. What the war on drugs has cost this country is simply not worth what it protects (virtually nothing, except for all the people making money off the police state it's created).
22. Re:Dismiss every drug case by MightyYar · 2012-08-20 16:59 · Score: 2
  
  If the drugs were legal they would be far cheaper and people wouldn't need to steal to support their habit.
  Let's say we let the drug price fall to the natural price, effects be damned. I'm not certain that you are correct that people would not need to steal. How is a junkie making a living? Certainly a long-time heroin user is not holding down a job? Wouldn't the junkie just need to steal less?
  But even if I accept your reasoning, it wouldn't help the public health problems created by drug use.
  And of course there is the social burden of millions of additional drug addicts.
  
  --
  W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
23. Re:Dismiss every drug case by CanHasDIY · 2012-08-21 02:05 · Score: 2
  
  Forget the regular gun. A dart gun loaded we Succinylcholine. A powerful paralytic. Roid ranger goes down hard, no dead bodies, no fighting, no risk to bystanders or neighbors. Just bag and tag. You want to keep him breathing (he can't breath without help) and keep him alive until the welcome wagon arrives. Nonlethal, completely effective, and after a few hours, leaves no trace in the blood stream. The perfect asshole management technology. Everyone should have one.
  Yea, until the doped out assbag sues you for intentional infliction of emotional distress, or some such bullshit.
  
  --
  An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
It smells, like yesterday's fish! by icebike · 2012-08-20 05:59 · Score: 5, Insightful

Am I allowed to pup up and point out the obvious that the two Terabytes needed to store this information can be purchased from Seagate via Amazon for $139 bucks?
DEA: Buy two drives. One for yourselves, one for discovery. You can take it out of the taxes I paid last year. Pay me back when you collect reasonable discovery charges.
The trifling cost aside, this seems to suggest that the DEA is aware that their case is fatally weak, and relies on sifting mountains of data that no jury on earth is capable of understanding in the hope of finding some faint pattern in the data that suggests intent. If there were obvious infractions, it would be easy to prove by pointing out 20 or 30 of them and call it a day. If it is so subtle that you need two terabytes to prove it, you probably don't have much of a case anyway.
Even if the Goods Doctor (see what I did there?) was guilty as hell, and the DEA is worried that purging some evidence and concentrating on specific acts might give grounds for appeal due to hiding evidence, the simple precaution of copying it to cheap off line storage should be sufficient.
Something is rotten about this whole story, and I suspect its a huge smoke screen for some other operation, or perhaps proceeding with the case would put methods or undercover operatives at risk, or require personnel that are current not available. Or maybe they know the Doctor is on his death bed or will soon contract some fatal disease, at which will make the whole point moot. Or maybe the doctor is singing like a canary these days.

--
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by fiordhraoi · 2012-08-20 06:09 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  Agreed. Even if you want to say that they need the storage network-available and in a RAID, you could buy an entry level commercial NAS for under a thousand dollars plus the cost of drives. So even with say, 6 drives, you're still looking at sub 3 grand for 10TB of usable storage, and that's assuming you probably paid too much for the drives. I would be that cost wise, that is about the equivalent maybe five to ten hours of a government lawyer's time, to say nothing of the investigators, etc, etc.
2. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by Dunbal · 2012-08-20 06:18 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  When the government does it, it's $1.39 million per drive.
  
  --
  Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
3. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by hawguy · 2012-08-20 06:19 · Score: 2
  
  Am I allowed to pup up and point out the obvious that the two Terabytes needed to store this information can be purchased from Seagate via Amazon for $139 bucks?
  A single disk drive is not someplace to store data you want to keep. It should at a minimum be on a RAID array that does automatic scrubbing for data errors, and is backed up offsite (either through tape or live replication).
  But still, that shouldn't bring the cost beyond a few thousand dollars - which seems a small price to pay to keep a 5 year old case alive.
4. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by TubeSteak · 2012-08-20 06:27 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  The trifling cost aside, this seems to suggest that the DEA is aware that their case is fatally weak, and relies on sifting mountains of data that no jury on earth is capable of understanding in the hope of finding some faint pattern in the data that suggests intent. If there were obvious infractions, it would be easy to prove by pointing out 20 or 30 of them and call it a day. If it is so subtle that you need two terabytes to prove it, you probably don't have much of a case anyway.
  He spent five years writing and endless stream of perscriptions for painkillers and sedatives/anti-anxiety meds.
  So an alternative theory, which fits the facts, is that the two TB and boxes of files reflect the massive scale of the the Doctor's illegal acts.
  
  Something is rotten about this whole story, and I suspect its a huge smoke screen for some other operation, or perhaps proceeding with the case would put methods or undercover operatives at risk, or require personnel that are current not available. Or maybe they know the Doctor is on his death bed or will soon contract some fatal disease, at which will make the whole point moot. Or maybe the doctor is singing like a canary these days.
  This is conspiracy theory fabricated out of thin air.
  A journalist wrote an article about the Doctor's habit of perscribing pills, then the fraud unit of the US Attorney General started looking into his practice.
  The DEA and Medicare had all the perscriptions on file, the illegal acts were out in the open.
  There's no smoke screen or undercover operations.
  
  --
  [Fuck Beta]
  o0t!
5. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by JDG1980 · 2012-08-20 06:32 · Score: 2
  
  He spent five years writing and endless stream of perscriptions for painkillers and sedatives/anti-anxiety meds.
  He's a doctor. He's legally entitled to do that if there is a legitimate medical reason. And in borderline cases, he's entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
6. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by turbidostato · 2012-08-20 06:41 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  "A single disk drive is not someplace to store data you want to keep."
  Yes it is, of course it is. IT claims to be an engineering and engineering is about solving problems, rationally, and under current constrains.
  That means that when the current option is dismissing a case and trash all data , a meagre 150US$ SATA disk is a perfectly suitable alternative.
7. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by timeOday · 2012-08-20 06:49 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  This whole slashdot story is a sham, and so is your speculation. If you just follow a couple links you can get to the motion itself. What it says is, they know exactly where the guy is, efforts to get Panama to extradite him have failed for years, and since the case is dead they want to close out the files.
  Sometimes I wonder why I even bother with these silly stories. They're always bogus, and they always lead to pages and pages of wild conspiracy theories and political rants. You're making fools of yourselves.
8. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by torkus · 2012-08-20 06:59 · Score: 2
  
  Don't these things have to go out for bid? :)
  Bidding process cost >>> actual delivered service or hardware
  Go government! On a more serious note, a prosumer NAS sounds nice but this is storing evidence for a federal investigation. The server must be able to pass an audit review, show detailed metadata, and show that data wasn't tampered with. Just like physical evidence is secured and has a chain of custody. If you question where that pound of heroin came from, you can show - signature to signature - how it got from your trunk to the DEA's analysis office to the courtroom evidence table and question each individual in the process if necessary.
  Just because the evidence is digital doesn't mean you can throw out all those requirements by slapping truecrypt on a NAS or eSATA drive. If anything, it's more important because digital information is easier to manipulate - especially from afar. It's much harder to replace that brick of coke with flour from outside the evidence locker unless you brought your portal gun.
  
  --
  You can get rich if you own a politician, but you have to be rich to buy one in the first place.
9. Re:It smells, like yesterday's fish! by hawguy · 2012-08-20 08:00 · Score: 2
  
  I have drives sitting in archives (out of computers, on the shelf in sealed bags) since 1995.
  They were put there to hold original Autocad files for electrical systems of buildings.
  Periodically we have to dredge these up and extract copies of some documents. None has ever given us a bit of trouble.
  A drive out of a computer in a sealed environment is an amazing storage media. Virtually zero bit rot regardless of what the end-of-the-world doom sayers tell you about decaying magnetic fields. Spinning storage is at far greater risk than storage sitting in a disconnected machine or bare drive.
  The biggest problem is remembering to keep at least one controller that is capable or running these older drive types. In fact, that is the only reason we ever copy drives to newer media; simply because mfm controllers and the machines that can accept them are becoming extinct.
  I have drives that have been spinning for over 5 years without a disk error, and drives that have failed after a month, 6 months, a year, etc.
  I don't trust my home mp3 collection to a single drive, nor would I trust data worth millions of dollars (or a criminal prosecution) to a single drive or even a single location. All of our important corporate data is replicated offsite (and is also saved to tape).
  I've pulled 2 year old PC's out of storage (stored in a climate controlled datacenter) and had drives fail to spin up even though they all worked fine when they were stored. Keeping the drive powered off is no guarantee of data integrity, but if you keep the drive powered on and scrubbed you know that the data is secure. (with 2 backup copies of the data via RAID-6 or RAID-DP)
  For powered off storage, I trust tapes a lot more than disk drives.
Note to the DEA by Sparticus789 · 2012-08-20 06:05 · Score: 4, Funny

I guess $150 is too much for the DEA to spend.
Note to criminals: To avoid prosecution, buy a few 2TB hard drives and fill them with dd if=/dev/urandom of=/mnt/hardrive1

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sudo make me a sandwich
The DEA by koan · 2012-08-20 06:07 · Score: 4, Informative

Is underfunded because they aren't there to stop drug trafficking, but rather to stop "unapproved" drug smugglers, some one/group in political power makes a lot of untraceable money by selling drugs, this is why they can not be made legal, the drug money finances black ops with money they don't have to ask congress for or get any approval on.

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"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Don't forget the hundreds of boxes of paper by Baloroth · 2012-08-20 06:10 · Score: 5, Insightful

I noticed the summary conveniently forgets to mention that there are also several hundred boxes of paper evidence. The electronic evidence is only one piece they mentioned: claiming, as the summary does, that they are dropping it due to lack of electronic data storage is somewhat misleading. And of course if Panama isn't going to extradite him anyways, which seems extremely likely, keeping the case open is a waste of resources no matter how you look at it.
And of course it isn't like these are 2 terabytes of Blu-ray movies: it's probably mostly text and image files, and that is a lot of text documents to keep track of and make sure are backed up on a regular basis, with a full chain of custody to ensure they aren't being tampered with and whatnot. Sure, 40 TB sounds like a small amount of data, but then again if you introduce 4 or 5 backups with tampering resistance... it suddenly starts looking like quite a bit.

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"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
1. Re:Don't forget the hundreds of boxes of paper by DanTheStone · 2012-08-20 06:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  I noticed the summary conveniently forgets to mention that there are also several hundred boxes of paper evidence.
  From the summary:
  
  In addition, information associated with the case had managed to fill 'several hundred boxes' of paper documents
  Next time you decide to bash the summary, read it first.
2. Re:Don't forget the hundreds of boxes of paper by gstoddart · 2012-08-20 06:34 · Score: 2
  
  Which then sounds like he could readily come back to the US.
  So is the message here (guilty or not, because I have no idea) to skip off to a non-extradition country until they can't afford to keep your case open, and then come back a free man as the charges have been dropped with prejudice?
  And, as I said elsewhere, I find it really hard to believe that it's beyond their means to keep storing this stuff. That just doesn't sound right. Storing large amounts of data is something the government should have a lot of experience in.
  
  --
  Lost at C:>. Found at C.
What the hell? by gstoddart · 2012-08-20 06:12 · Score: 2

These materials include two terabytes of electronic data (which consume approximately 5 percent of DEA's world-wide electronic storage capacity)
I'm sorry, but a major government agency can't afford two terabytes of data?
What happens to all of the stuff they seize and sell off? There should be no good reason why they can't have enough funds to pay for this.
If 2TB is 5%, then they've got, what, 40TB total? At one point last year on a project we were using almost 100TB with various backups and the like, but we're easily using 40-50TB right now. This is a solved problem.
I realize large-scale enterprise storage gets a little more spendy, but surely they have tape backup technology or can afford some disks for a SAN.
This is like finding out they only really have 10 cars to share among themselves or something. It makes me wonder if this is the "real" reason they're looking to drop the case. It just sounds improbable they can't manage this.

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Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Re:2 billion dollar budget and 2TB is too much? by Feyshtey · 2012-08-20 06:14 · Score: 5, Funny

You grossly underestimate government incompetence.

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"But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it,..." - Nancy Pelosi
Absolutely not! by Anonymous Coward · 2012-08-20 06:17 · Score: 5, Funny

The war on drugs is a disaster. Decriminalize all drugs, since that is the only thing that leads to a decrease in drug use and an increase in treatment.
I own stock in prison companies and if we decriminalize all drugs, then what am I to do?! And then there are all those cops, prosecutors, rehab, and the thousands of people who depend on drugs being illegal for their livings!
And then there is the morality of it all. Alcohol is different I say!
And it's important that someone who's been caught several times with a joint go to jail for the rest of their life because we all know stoners are causing all this trouble in society - being all mellow and such rot! They should be in the rat race - working themselves to death to make sure that the 1% keep their socioeconomic status. Don't those pot heads know that they are destroying the fabric of society?!
And the Bible says somewhere "Thou shalt not smoke a toke. Thous shalt not do blow." and some others; which means drugs aren't Christian - except for alcohol. Jesus had red wine for blood so drinking red wine is drinking Jesus' blood and therefore will get you into heaven. Really! It's in the Bible!
Enough for now. I just wish you anti-society hippies would keep your mouths shut!
1. Re:Absolutely not! by Sponge+Bath · 2012-08-20 07:19 · Score: 2
  
  Alcohol is different I say!
  Alcohol has been tied to skinny dipping Republican congressmen. That's a pretty strong argument for prohibition.
Re:sooo... by icebike · 2012-08-20 06:21 · Score: 3, Funny

On the other hand.....
Maybe a good thing. If we can't limit the size of government lets limit the size of their data storage.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Article is baseless speculation by tomhath · 2012-08-20 06:29 · Score: 4, Informative

FTFA:

Yet the motion to dismiss refers to storage of evidence related to Angulo’s case as an “economic and practical hardship.” The reference to “practical” may be key
No, the practical means the guy is in Panama, and Panama has already said they're not going to extradite him. So quit wasting time and resources - drop the case and move on.
Re:Properly backed up storage costs by hawguy · 2012-08-20 06:44 · Score: 2

Properly backed up storage costs about $8,000 per terabyte a year. For backup, checking, replacement, and spinning drive costs.
I may have understated the cost by saying "A few thousand dollars", but I know that my incremental cost to add 2TB of storage is around $3500 including the cost of disk at both the primary and remote site (but excluding bandwidth). This assumes that I add an entire disk shelf at a time, which is more than 2TB.
Re:So..... by CanHasDIY · 2012-08-20 07:19 · Score: 2

Oblig:

And they said
"Aren't you the suicide bomber,
who blew up the bus last year?"

I said "No"
They punched me
I said "think logically"
and they said
"You think logically!"
And I said
"... what?"
-- Tripod, "Suicide Bomber"

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An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Re:Funding by Mr.CRC · 2012-08-20 08:39 · Score: 2

They are over-funded, since their budget is > $0. The feds have the resources to bust the bankers. They don't want to. You don't bite the hand that feeds you. The gov. borrowing scheme and the primary broker dealers are like a snake eating its tail. This setup won't end because of reform. It has to collapse.