AT&T Is Spying on Americans For Profit, New Documents Reveal (thedailybeast.com)

AT&T has been secretly spying on its own customers, the Daily Beast reports. The revelation comes days after the top carrier announced plans to purchase Time Warner. The report claims that AT&T ran a program called Project Hemisphere through which it analyzed cellular data from the company's call records to determine where a given individual is located and with whom they are speaking. The New York Times reported about the program's existence in 2013, but it was described as a "partnership" between A&T and the government for fighting narcotics trafficking. But today's report, which cites several classifed documents, claims that AT&T used Hemisphere for a range of other functions -- and always without a warrant. From the report:Hemisphere is a secretive program run by AT&T that searches trillions of call records and analyzes cellular data to determine where a target is located, with whom he speaks, and potentially why. [...] Hemisphere isn't a "partnership" but rather a product AT&T developed, marketed, and sold at a cost of millions of dollars per year to taxpayers. No warrant is required to make use of the company's massive trove of data, according to AT&T documents, only a promise from law enforcement to not disclose Hemisphere if an investigation using it becomes public. These new revelations come as the company seeks to acquire Time Warner in the face of vocal opposition saying the deal would be bad for consumers. While telecommunications companies are legally obligated to hand over records, AT&T appears to have gone much further to make the enterprise profitable, according to ACLU technology policy analyst Christopher Soghoian. "Companies have to give this data to law enforcement upon request, if they have it. AT&T doesn't have to data-mine its database to help police come up with new numbers to investigate," Soghoian said. AT&T has a unique power to extract information from its metadata because it retains so much of it. The company owns more than three-quarters of U.S. landline switches, and the second largest share of the nation's wireless infrastructure and cellphone towers, behind Verizon. AT&T retains its cell tower data going back to July 2008, longer than other providers. Verizon holds records for a year and Sprint for 18 months, according to a 2011 retention schedule obtained by The Daily Beast.

Comments

Discovery

[doconnor]

"only a promise from law enforcement to not disclose Hemisphere if an investigation using it becomes public."

Aren't they required to disclose this kind of thing in the discovery phase of the prosecution? Anything less would be blatantly unconstitutional.

Re:Discovery

[Anonymous Coward]

"only a promise from law enforcement to not disclose Hemisphere if an investigation using it becomes public."

Aren't they required to disclose this kind of thing in the discovery phase of the prosecution? Anything less would be blatantly unconstitutional.

I am not a lawyer (and you are not either, it seems). However, I do know the law is a complicated thing, and when private individuals take action no warrant is required.

For example, if I walk into the police station with a video I took of my neighbor attacking her husband with a knife in her home, the defense can't claim that the video was recorded without a warrant. The state took no action to retrieve this data, so no warrant is needed. In this case AT&T is acting as a private individual to collect this information and provide it to law enforcement.

It gets a bit tricky, though, if the state is paying for access to this data. The question would be whether the state is effectively contracting the work out (turning AT&T into an agent of the state), or if AT&T is still acting as a private individual. That's a question for a lawyer... although the recent trend seems to be the courts not even allowing a challenge due to failure of a person to prove standing (creating an elegant literal Catch-22).

All this is to say... No, this does not necessarily require a warrant.

This is 2016

[Oswald McWeany]

This is 2016, I would have thought the very fact our telecommunications companies (and everyone else who has the ability to) are spying on us should be common knowledge, not news.

Here's a quick flow chart that applies to all big companies and organisations that you associate with.

Can they spy on you ------No-------> They're buying data about you from someone who can.
.|..
.|..
Yes.
.|..
\./.
They are spying on you.

Profit? Who is paying?

[PPH]

Lets say I want a list of all cell phone customers who regularly commute to a certain location in Langley, Virginia. And a list of the numbers that they call. And then I want a list of all of the phones worldwide that call these same numbers. I now have a pretty good list of all of your agents*. And if I am the FSB, it's a hell of a lot cheaper to buy that data from AT&T, Verizon and others than try to collect it myself. Thanks a lot, useful idiots.

*It's a bit more complicated than this. But link analysis tools can dig down through quite a few nodes to recover useful information.

Re:too big?

[Archangel Michael]

You've made the best case I've seen in a long time as to why Government should be limited. Not sure that was your intention though. ;)

Re:So, let me get this straight...

[edtice1559]

Actually, an FCC working group did just put forth proposals to solve this problem. It's actually a harder problem to solve. AT&T has no trouble seeing who their customers call and potentially cutting off those who abuse the phone system. But that's not the same problem as what to do when calls from other networks hit yours. It's the difference between protecting your network from internal vs. external attacks.