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AT&T Maintains Call Database For the DEA Going Back To 1987
Jah-Wren Ryel writes "Forget the NSA — the DEA has been working hand-in-hand with AT&T on a database of records of every call that passes through AT&T's phone switches going back as far as 1987. The government pays AT&T for contractors who sit side-by-side with DEA agents and do phone records searches for them. From the article: 'For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counter narcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.'"
The article is behind a god damned paywall. This one isn't. Google lists many, many sources.
Does Jah-Wren Ryel work for the Times and is trying to increase subscription numbers? A link to a paywall is no citation whatever.
Oh, and according to what I read, these aren't warrentless searches.
Free Martian Whores!
I think there is a simple solution for this. All phones sold should have a written disclaimer stamped on the case that reads "All calls are monitored for possible criminal activity and any other reason the authorities may deem necessary." I can't believe anyone thinks there is any privacy left on any public communications system.
Not even a little bit. Do you imagine Ron Paul would somehow have changed any of this?
'For at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counter narcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.'
See that, NSA? Somehow the DEA managed to use the ordinary justice system without totally dismantling the Constitution.
Not that I think the War on Drugs (TM) is any less stupid and wasteful than the War on Terrism (TM), but at least we see that we don't need a parallel, secret justice [sic] system to "fight" it.
I am not a crackpot.
Ron Paul was a libertarian in the party that started the war on drugs (Reagan) and was helping them effectively by being their fig leaf to bring in libertarian votes. Overall republicans were more in favor of warrant less wiretapping etc. (although democrats suck too so there is enough blame to go around) but Paul was not the answer. He was a part of the problem.
War on drugs, war on terror: just scare tactics used to get us to accept a police / surveillance state.
What do you do when the cure is worse than the poison?
Would love to hear story about how they lost the records from before 1987
While i don't believe in the 'if you are innocent you have nothing to hide' concept, most people really don't care of the government knows that the wife told them to grab some milk on the way home.
The trade off was cheap and instantaneous communication between you and said wife. Most of us are willing to accept that level of intrusion for the convenience.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Doesn't involve a judge though. Just the DEA.
Makes me wonder, though, just how many times the DEA denies a subpoena on a DEA-supposed pusher?
(Due process being SO last century...)
Don't forget those are record and available to the government from the beginning of time too...
What you buy today legally and innocently may get you a call from the FBI 5 years later to ask you a few questions. ( i have personally seen this happen )
The moral is that *anything* we do with a commercial provider can and will be recorded. Even if is for honest and non invasive reasons today, that doesn't mean it wont be used different ways by other people decades later.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Please read the article further. Your statement is far from correct:
Look, it's not a constitutional issue, the government isn't doing this at all. The government is paying someone else to do it, which is completely different.
"Bob Smith? Bob never worked here. I've got last year's 1099 we gave him to prove it."
From the article:
In other words, no, there's no oversight. The DEA issues its own legal requests. The AT&T "contractors" who issue the queries sit next to the agents and are paid for by the DEA (in other words, they're employees of the government). Elsewhere the presentation makes a reference to routing requests via Washington state which somehow converts them into court orders, not sure what that's about.
Also, the presentation tells agents to cover up the fact that it exists and how to do so, so we're back into "parallel reconstruction" terroritory.
That said, I actually care less about this sort of thing than what the NSA is doing, as it's (a) not classified and apparently can be learned about via the regular channels despite their requests for secrecy and (b) it's being used to catch more ordinary, every day criminals like people who rob jewellery shops or make bomb threats. The almost total blurring between corporation and state is very concerning because it implies there's nothing stopping it from stepping over the line and becoming used for petty political activism or worse, but at least they try to actually justify the programs existence with examples (unlike nearly all NSA training material, it seems).
No they are ATT employes just as the large number of BT employes at GCHQ are BT employees and not civil servants (well not any more post privatization)
Doesn't involve a judge though. Just the DEA.
Wrong. If there's a subpoena, there's a judge.
Not necessarily. The DEA gained the ability to issue 'administrative subpoenas' in 1970, and uses them routinely and on a nontrivial scale. All they have to do is assert that the material is 'relevant to an investigation' and out it goes. No muss, no fuss, no tedious judicial oversight.
Cop shows or movies dont really have the massive backend database waiting for a look. :)
Most classic scripts would have some hint at a court/judge and then some hardware on site or telco look up of a person named.
Billing records would be presented as fair game but after the right paperwork - all very formal and correct, tension in needing "evidence" and not losing a case.
A total 24/7 database of all a countries/regions calls, telco staff helping and internal paperwork per 'look' feels like a spy movie
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Keep doing what you have always done, you will get what you always got.
Ron Paul was/is different. If you can't see that, then you are blind, and a useful slave.
This right here is the perfect example of when groups push for goals without looking at the big picture. So not only did they take away camping, and hiking from the people who live there, but to add insult to injury, it was sold, and a golf course put in (private I assume) so the land is now not available for ANYONE, any animals that called the place home are now gone and theres an ugly private golf course where a once beautiful park was.
Environmentalists who push like this really piss me off. Meanwhile hes sitting at home patting himself on the back for what a good job he did saving the planet from the evil humans....
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
ANYTHING is better than a Republocrat.
Same as any president in our lifetime.
For another example of left-wing psychos going overboard with public land, read about People's Park in Bezerkely.
I especially like how they made Ohlone Park a dog's park, where dogs could be free from human oppression. Big surprise, they formed a pack, run by a Top Dog. Not only did Berkeley fail to create the New Man, they failed to create the New Dog.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
While i don't believe in the 'if you are innocent you have nothing to hide' concept, most people really don't care of the government knows that the wife told them to grab some milk on the way home.
But I do care about the NYPD cannibal cop that abused a restricted law-enforcement database so that he could find women to consume. Do you really think he's the only one abusing the system?
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
My point exactly. If fighting drug use with the criminal justice system requires that America turn into a fascist police state...then it's not worth it.
Whatever the scourge of drug use, I put it that the fascist police state has caused far more damage to the country than the drugs themselves ever could.
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
not sure that it is really off topic, it parallels what is going on with the government when they create these programs which end up growing into something which was not the intention, but by that point they are stuck with it so they convince themselves they are doing good.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Agreed, it's surveillance when they record your actions, not when then get a warrant to take a look at that recording (or in the case of the NSA click a checkbox and fucking lie to Congress about getting a warrant).
It's no different than if they stuck a GPS tracker on you, just in case they wanted to serve a warrant on you in future to get your GPS location.
Come to think of it, the phone records now include your location, so its exactly identical.
Fucking mass surveillance. They got away with it, because it was kept secret. As if hiding a crime, somehow makes it not a crime!
Isn't this information shown in every cop show or movie?
Well, if Leslie Nielsen did in in The Naked Gun, it must be constitutional.
Some of the writers of more serious cop dramas make references to certain police activities in order to bring attention to them and trigger public discussions.
Have gnu, will travel.
Authoritarian Tattle Tales, that's what.
From the article:
"It is queried for phone numbers of interest mainly using what are called “administrative subpoenas,” those issued not by a grand jury or a judge but by a federal agency, in this case the D.E.A."
So the DEA agents themselves decide to have AT&T pull your phone records.
CSI featured the 'Omniscient Database' so often, it inspired the TV Tropes page. Numb3rs didn't even bother to go into the question of where all the data was pulled in from, but communications analysis was a frequent technique there, and the police department in Dexter just has access to every DNA database everywhere to identify DNA - if they don't find a match in the police database they'll simply use the medical records database, or the paternity test record database. In one case they got a match because someone had been tested for STIs, and the clinic still had a sample of record they handed over without a warrant.
There's a practical reason for this in fiction: No-one wants to watch boring courtroom issues and debates over probably cause. Due process just gets in the way of the crimehunting detective work, so it is quickly glossed over unless there is a specific plot that requires it be focused upon.
Someone needs to do a parody of the AT&T "You will" commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MnQ8EkwXJ0
Except instead of the original script, have it go something like:
"Have you ever tapped someone's phone...without leaving your desk? Or downloaded their entire call history at the touch of a button?...You will - and the company that will bring it to you: AT&T."
Fuck you to anyone brushing this off . Apparently you haven't been keeping current with the analyses done that show just exactly what information meta-data can reveal.
No one supposed that ALL DOMESTIC CALLS' meta data was being recorded for and kept forever. What can be inferred about the activities of political candidates, corporate activities, activists of every persuasion, etc etc is incredible. This is what's been happening since the 80s? Really?
There is a ocean of difference between asking for so called pen -register data on a person under investigation and then as a result having such data start to be collected and CONSTANTLY COLLECTING AND PERSISTING ALL SUCH DATA ON EVERYONE from the mid 80s onwards. A motherfucking OCEAN of difference.
Since all this meta data is "public" Can I get it? Please put it online and let me download it. What? No I can't get it? But who HAS gotten, because *anyone* can since it's been ruled to be a public record.
From NBC news:
"Telephone calls were the first technology to attack the notion. Are calls passing through wires inside or outside your home? Back in 1979, the U.S. Supreme Court clarified this issue and ruled that information about telephone calls â" such as numbers dialed, or the length of phone calls â" was distinct from the content of phone calls, and thus was not protected by the Fourth Amendment. " ...
"The Supreme Court explained its pen register vs. wiretap distinction in 1979 by calling on the "third-party doctrine." Americans lose their expectation of privacy, the court reasoned, whenever they voluntarily give information to a third party, such as a phone company. Telling the phone company who you call by dialing a number is enough to surrender your expectation of privacy that you are contacting that person, the court held."
So for decades we've been effectively spied on by persons or groups unknown to us.
Does that explain anything about how history in this country has taken a hard right turn along every dimension? How labor has been decimated and unable to counter the 1%'s machinations? How attempts to organize against off-shoring and to fight against NAFTA and the rapid rise of the right wing since 1980 ?
I mean, this is public information - no one has a right to expect privacy , except .. except ... it's funny public information isn't it? You and I can't get it, just the people the phone companies want to give it to can have it.
So the telcos have done very well for themselves since 1980 I notice, .. I notice that cable in this country
1) sucks ass and
2) is a duopoly where I live and oh by the way where you live too.
I also notice that despite these incredibly invasive powers we're losing the war on drugs and have been every year since 1980. But this is supposed to help us win that fight, right? That's its stated purpose right? So why is it so useless?
Uh, maybe it's not really for that purpose. Maybe it's being used an instrument of political control because THAT has been going very well indeed for the 1%.
This is a joke. If anyone had suggested that all data on all Americans would be logged , analyzed and made available to private actors forever, then the courts would NOT have decided the way they did because people wouldn't have stood for it.
I don't want my kids growing up in this country. I don't want them manipulated and marginalized and thwarted at every turn by an unseen class of people who have unique and private access to their activities and use that information to undermine their lives, their aspirations, their political activities, their attempts to implement change in this nation.
This is a joke. This is what people were afraid the NSA would BECOME- a gigantic spy machine for the purpose of political control by a privileged political class with privileged access to secret "public" information.
This is far far far far far far far worse than anything the NSA did. This is a BIG FUCKING DEAL PEOPLE.
The NSA had a copy of this one from the beginning, too.
Attorney here, I've seen more subpoenas issued by fellow attorneys than I've ever seen issued by a judge. Example: If a bankruptcy trustee wants to depose a debtor for one reason or another (or if a creditor wants to do the same), they'll issue a subpoena of their own accord. I've even sent subpoenas myself on occasion. This is usually occurring when the matter is not quite serious enough to bother a judge for his/her signature.
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