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DEA Paid Amtrak Employee To Pilfer Passenger Lists
Via Ars Technica comes news that an Amtrak employee was paid nearly $900,000 over the last ten years to give the DEA passenger lists outside of normal channels. Strangely enough, the DEA already had access to such information through official channels. From the article: The employee, described as a "secretary to a train and engine crew" in a summary obtained by the AP, was selling the customer data without Amtrak's approval. Amtrak and other transportation companies collect information from their customers including credit card numbers, travel itineraries, emergency contact info, passport numbers, and dates of birth. When booking tickets online in recent years, Amtrak has also collected phone numbers and e-mail addresses. ... Amtrak has long worked closely with the DEA to track drug trafficking activity on its train lines. The Albuquerque Journal reported in 2001 that "a computer with access to Amtrak's ticketing information sits on a desk in the [DEA]'s local office," wrote the ACLU.
Let's guess who gets in trouble...
The employee selling the data..check (low level scape goat)
Maybe an IT guy that allowed excessive permission.. maybe he just gets fired...
Any DEA agents or upper level management who authorized illegal and warrant-less data collection? NO
Any Amtrak executives for allowing it to be provided (through the employee or the terminal in the DEA office?) NO
If we are lucky we will hear some strong words at a congressional hearing, and that will be the end of it.
Silence is a state of mime.
Maybe it's just a case of what the news industry calls "independent verification". Of course, the way it typically works is that the original source X passes copies to friends Y and Z, who slightly paraphrase the wording and send it in to the news organization through different channels. X, Y and Z then all get paid for their work. Governmental information agencies have long understood how this "verification" process works.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
It is so obvious, too. I would have cops waiting when I boarded, dogs walking the perimeter at only my final destination, and even had friends harassed simply because the wrong credit card paid for their ticket. Easy enough to get off a stop or two early, or board later on the route than the ticket suggested. Not once was I hassled in transit.
article says "nearly 20 years" not "last 10 years"
Do people really have to provide passport numbers and dates of birth to get on the train in America? Unbelivable.
Has the DEA been sending him a yearly 1099 for taxes? if not, then the IRS needs to audit the DEA.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's what the NSA does to get data. The companies don't need to spy for the NSA when the employees are paid off to give the information over.
Articles such as this will henceforth only be of interest to me if they include examples where my data is not collected.
Whirrr...click. Adjustment Bureau confirms your new filter parameters.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
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windowsupdate.microsoft.com
WTF?
Sounds like someone was circumventing controls. The DEA had access... but did everyone in the DEA have access? I doubt it. One department likely had the data and getting to it either required evidence some didn't want to bother with, or was political, or maybe involved transferring money from your department to the controlling department. I've seen businesses where IS has control of an application, but what they claimed it cost per license was high enough that another department went out and bought the application themselves. I can't help but think this is the sort of thing that lead to this.
Sounds like perfectly normal business to me. Getting paid $900.000 to tell you something you already know? That's called Consulting.
Don't miss out, there are, FREE patches to soothe, your ravaged, souls. Come and, be, WHOLE again.
windowsupdate.microsoft.com
WTF?
Probably a guy whom the DEA would be interested to meet if you ask me... ;-)
Are they sure it was the DEA that was actually requesting this info then? Seems fishy.
This is probably rather controversial, but it should be said. The DEA was never created in order to police drugs.
Richard Nixon created the DEA in part as a reaction to the 60's neo liberal counter culture, and in part at the behest of southern constituents in response to the 1964 civil rights amendment. this is evidenced by the fact that the DEA targets disproportionally minority communities for enforcement, regardless of the well documented fact that affluent communities exhibit similar levels of drug posession. its also supported by the lack of any DEA presence or investigation during the iran contra scandal as well as the existence of numerous politicians and heads of state whom have repeatedly divulged their consumption of narcotics despite our nations zero tolerance policy.
as the push for drug sentencing reform continues, the DEA is finding itself increasingly useless as anything but an obstructionist wing of the government clinging for federal dollars. Blowing a million dollars on an amtrak mole despite existing access is just one example, but their raids on California dispensaries and legislative obstructionism shouldnt be ignored. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Good people go to bed earlier.
The staggering idiocy of paying a million dollars for something you already have or the all-too-common practice of law enforcement to regard the Constitution as an irritating afterthought.
Surely this is illegal? I know that the US has no privacy laws, but it is still theft. Both he and the individuals purchasing the stolen data should be prosecuted.
Of course, it won't happen because "War on Drugs", and anyway, anything the US government wants is ok.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Why? Seems like exactly the opposite — DEA does know, Amtrak has the information, and DEA arranged for the information to be available to them at ease...
I'm not surprised either, but I don't see, how this is unconstitutional. The Constitution has nothing on the right to travel and, if you ask a government official, you'll quickly realize, they consider traveling to be a privilege instead.
You can not buy an Amtrak ticket anonymously. And you can not give your ticket to anyone else. With air-tickets this fraud was put upon us (years before 9/11) with the argument, that the airline and the law-enforcement need to screen the passenger names against list of criminals — so they need to know all names in advance.
But most Amtrak tickets are purchased within hours before departure, AFAIK, so this argument would not hold.
We need the traveling to be explicitly declared a right, that only the Judiciary can suspend after a trial — rather than a mere privilege, that the Executive can withdraw on their whim (such as by adding you to a "no-fly" list) or, indeed, demanding to "see your papers" (and recording them for future use).
I can't see it happening any time soon, though. Bushitler-created TSA has only expanded under the Nobel Peace Prize Administration — and now insists on covering not just air-travel, but all mass transit. Driving a personal car has required a government permission for near a century, and being driven by someone else is increasingly difficult too.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I once got a fax/email thing that was sent to me by accident, of someone requesting that their info be removed from the Amtrack database. I was trying to figure out why someone would care, but I guess maybe they knew it was being passed around.
One can only shake your head.
I wonder if an investigation would reveal that the secretary knew someone in the DEA and was 'sharing the wealth."
This is a little snip of how the Federal Government really works: Agency vs Agency like the old Mad Magazine Spy vs Spy.
But that was very nice haul getting $90k per year for 10 years; DEA pays GOOD, just like to the Mexican Cartels --- Remember
the "Fast And Furious" program with the FBI and DoJ Administrator !
Paying for passengers list is just a cover for other services purchased by DEA.
hmmm, class action lawsuit? this is a security breach.
the DEA were the hackers here, they took personal data without permission. this should be a class action suit against both amtrak and the DEA. will some lawyer out there start writing it up???
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
That's just amazing. Any company I've worked for, I'd be strung up by the heels for giving away customer data, let alone selling it for the better part of a million dollars. One article notes "It was not clear whether the DEA has rules against soliciting corporate insiders to provide confidential customer information in exchange for money." Really, they need a specific rule against that? I can see a DEA official whispering in someone's ear "Shut up, shut up, let it go and just let her retire."
Either the agents involved are working for rival drug dealers or were running some kind of shakedown scam. That's the only reason they'd want information off the books that they could instantly obtain from an official database.
Actually, if the employee was selling Amtrak's proprietary information without Amtrak's consent and was keeping the money, they are guilty of embezzlement and DEA employees may be guilty of crimes related to arranging that activity, e.g. conspiracy or solicitation.
If the employee was selling Amtrak's proprietary information and giving the money to Amtrak, the DEA was breaching its contract with Amtrak. The DEA has to share the proceeds of drug busts based on information that comes from Amtrak with Amtrak, and this method circumvented that deal.
Amtrak is just a one source, of many. Intelligence agencies not only get the information, but also get this information via different channels to have redundancy and to verify those copies against each other. Sources do not know about each other. That is basic rule in operations against the enemy. To begin with, most likely Amtrak serves have been hacked by NSA long time ago and they have the information directly. In addition to that they have insiders, on the payroll, to get the same data as well as interpretations on the data. Call it "customer" support. There is the last avenue, "constitutional", is to go and get subpoenas or other boring methods. Such redundancy was needed to give impression that the public has "privacy". Spying was performed first and, later, when the case was built, "different" sources were shown. All for the appearance of "privacy". Greyhound buses, Urban transit, Amazon, Ebay, iTunes, Fedex, USPS, EZ pass,: everyone has a "file" recorded in relationship databases available for query.
In the real world, there are real people who's heart's desire is power over other people. Also, they see other people as nothing more than a means to their own ends, and as such the word "evil" is completely without meaning to them (as are such words as "justice" or "honesty").
Such people exist. The stupid ones wind up getting arrested. The smart ones wind up running mega corporations or filling top-level government positions.
All of the *problems* we are lamenting here are actually the deliberate efforts of these people, who have the means, motive, and opportunity to do so. This sort of thing will continue to the precise extent that it is tolerated by the masses (and by "tolerated" I mean "the people might complain about it but most of them don't bother to get up and do anything about it," which is precisely the case here).
Hey, babe. Take a walk on the wild side...
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You ignorant bigoted piece of shit. Just don't give the prostitute money, and leave her to live her life as she chooses.
Paying someone to steal a database full of information is what would be illegal and unconstitutional if they did not have a warrant. Amtrak is within its right to sell the information to the DEA or share it willingly though.
You can travel via assumed or "borrowed" identity.
In this case it probably IS information theft. But that's the price you have to pay for keeping the info quiet (as in, getting the info from legitimate channels like they could do would have caused attention to be focused on what they were doing...and apparently they didn't want scrutiny...) now isn't it?
Heh...are you *positive* that this was the case or was it more a matter of them doing something clandestine and didn't want scrutiny (as would have been caused by them getting it through normal, official, LEGAL channels...)?
Yeah, no fucking way. That's fucking repulsively disgusting.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
I worked at Amtrak in IT in the 80s and 90s, on the reservations and ticketing database. From my contacts still there, I understand the guts have not received a major upgrade.
Amtrak is NOT a government agency. It is subsidized by the government, though per passenger-mile they get less gummint money than the air industry or the highway system.
The reservations system is still written in assembler. They have a nice graphic front end, but its guts are ancient. And the graphic front end is a bit tricky when it comes to producing end user reports.
I have no problem believing that they provided a console to the DEA and some instructions on how to make that console produce reports on passenger names/routes/etc. I also have no problem believing that whoever worked at the DEA had trouble with the details of getting information out of that console, or tried to build his access into part of his own little office kingdom.
I also would not be surprised if a completely different component of the DEA had trouble getting reports from within their system and just found it easier to pay someone at Amtrak to give them those reports in a more timely manner.
I greatly dislike prostitution. I regret that some people feel it's the only way they can earn a living. I would prefer that there wasn't a market for such services.
None of that makes me hate people that provide such services.
None of that makes me a bigoted twat that hates transgendered people for no reason other than my own ignorance.
I'd rather be a clown.
Truth is you bought some from her, and are now completely embarrassed that you discovered you really liked it.
Seriously I know how you people operate, denouncing something while being the biggest consumers of that product.
Look at how many drugs Mr. Reagan was selling while starting the war on drugs here.
Look at how many strippers and prostitutes show up in town when the Republicans have their national convention.
Look at how many anti-gay activists have been outed.
Yeah, you know what you want, you're just afraid of what your jerk friends will think and being ostracized by other like thinking bigots.
If you need a motive or think this was unintentional, take a look at the second to last paragraph in the first linked article:
Under a joint drug enforcement task force that includes the DEA and Amtrak’s own police agency, the task force can obtain Amtrak confidential passenger reservation information at no cost, the inspector general’s report said. Under an agreement, Amtrak police would receive a share of any money seized as a result of such drug task force investigations, and Amtrak’s inspector general concluded that DEA’s purchase of the passenger information deprived the Amtrak Police Department of money it would have received from resulting drug arrests.
By getting the list through back channels, there was no need to share the proceeds!
Ignorant? Really?
Bigoted against tranny prostitites? On government transportation that the public rides on? HELL, yes. Publicly visited transport should be free of this filth. You're a complete fucktard for thinking this is not completely fucking disgusting and actually supporting it's actions. Just because some assclown wants to pretend it's a woman, that certainly means that it isn't. Get that seedy shit off of national transportation that people have to pay to be on. Clown.
Amtrak isn't government transportation anymore than Uber Lyft or a taxi would be government transportation. The train is private property, which happens to do business with the public. Why do you want to restrain private business, you commie hippie?
More importantly, your vitriol seems directed against someone because they are a tranny, not because they are a prostitute. You protest too much. Are you hiding something? In the closet maybe? Did you pay in a drunken stupor and then regret seeing your "gurl" the next day?
Finally, just because we may support someone else's rights doesn't mean we don't think they are disgusting. The real victim in this case is mannish looking women, who are avoided just in case :p
Don't feed the trolls. That guy is obviously immune to reasoned arguments that would interfere with his bigotry. It's right to call him out for it, but any further discussion is just more opportunity for him to spew his loathsome bile everywhere.
Ignorant? Really?
Bigoted against tranny prostitites? On government transportation that the public rides on? HELL, yes. Publicly visited transport should be free of this filth. You're a complete fucktard for thinking this is not completely fucking disgusting and actually supporting it's actions. Just because some assclown wants to pretend it's a woman, that certainly means that it isn't. Get that seedy shit off of national transportation that people have to pay to be on. Clown.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
I see you've experimented in replacing one rod in the ass for a different one.
Joe Biden is a square shooter. Joe Biden for 2016!
I don't get this. I rode Amtrack twice last year. Paid cash for ticket. No identification was required. Just go on and went.