Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 211 posts

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#81

Post by baddox »

genwin wrote: post #78
baddox wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't imagine violence going up if drug prohibition was ended, even if you don't count the violence committed by public officers enforcing drug laws.

I can imagine that, because a crack or meth user can't hold down a decent job. Whether legal or not they'd tend to have to rob to get the money to stay high. And when legal it's likely more people would get addicted.

Now you're assuming both that drug abuse would increase if drug prohibition ended and that drugs wouldn't get drastically cheaper. Both are claims you would need to support, and claims I do not believe.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#82

Post by genwin »

baddox wrote: post #79
genwin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question of what does more harm than good. The vast majority of people who drink alcohol can still be sober at work. Whereas a crack addict will tend to be high all day, unable to work, thus needing to rob to feed their addiction.

You're also conflating all levels of alcohol usage with crack addiction . It's possible for many people (though granted, probably nearly genetically impossible for some people) to use either without becoming addicted. And for alcoholics, it's often very hard to hold down a job.

It's a matter of percentages. Perhaps 5% of alcohol users have a significant problem with it, that drags down those around them. I don't know what the percentage is for crack but I bet it's over 90%, high enough that we shouldn't take a chance on the users who aren't addicted to it promoting it to the 90% who would become addicted it.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#83

Post by shawn-furyan »

genwin wrote: post #39
pstuart wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, no, no. Making them illegal makes more violent crime. Let me put you in rehab for your coffee addiction or beer habit, ok?

Coffee addictions don't lead to more violent crime or robbery, as far as I know. Does making meth and crack legal make less crime (violent or robbery) than if their usage was nil? I highly doubt it.

>Does making meth and crack legal make less crime (violent or robbery) than if their usage was nil?

That's not one of the available options. I mean, looking back at the article, the spoils of this program are incredibly paltry given the enormity of the data set. Criminalization of drugs and Militarization of enforcement groups is not significantly deterring usage because they are so ineffective even with so many resources and so little respect for the civil rights of users and non-users alike. All these programs have been effective at is raising the bar for drug distribution organizations to a point where militarization and violence is necessary for operation.

>Coffee addictions don't lead to more violent crime or robbery, as far as I know.

Perhaps they would if they were criminalized. There's nothing very violent about marijuana use except the militarized distribution chain and criminal enforcement apparatus. If 7-11 could sell it from behind the counter, I expect that you would see marijuana related violent deaths drop precipitously.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#84

Post by dllthomas »

qwerty_asdf wrote: post #77
rdl wrote: post #59

I think a total boycott of ATT would be a good start, since it appears ATT actually was out in front of Verizon and T-Mobile and Sprint on this. I'd probably trust T-Mobile and Sprint more than either ATT or Sprint based on corporate history, too. Still totally untrustworthy, but there probably is a difference. It's getting to the point where a good alternative to how cellphones work might be worthwhile, to keep loca…

Good luck. How do you boycott a backbone network provider thatmay ultimately service your chosen ISP anyway? Sure, you harm their consumer and residential retail operations, but that won't cripple their business to business operations, which is where all the real money is anyway.

Mesh networks?

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#85

Post by genwin »

baddox wrote: post #72
genwin wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a question of what does more harm than good. The vast majority of people who drink alcohol can still be sober at work. Whereas a crack addict will tend to be high all day, unable to work, thus needing to rob to feed their addiction.

You're making a big assumption: that the war on drugs, even if it cost no money and ruined no lives on its own , in any way lowers the number of people addicted to hard drugs and the amount of violence related to hard drugs. While I don't have any specific data, it seems pretty obvious to me that it only increases both.

I do make the assumption that a war on drugs can lower the number of people addicted to hard drugs, and from there the amount of violence related to it. But that assumption includes the way I would handle it, like forcing users to be in rehab before prison is considered.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#86

Post by dllthomas »

jlgreco wrote: post #66
whyleyc wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's because as a stimulant it has a combination of relatively low addictive properties and is easy to withdraw from when compared to more "hardcore" substances [1] [1] http://www.drugsense.org/tfy/addictvn.htm

All of those things, except "stimulant" technically, can be said of pot too. Hell, caffeine is physically addictive (not to even get into the lifestyles you can build around it that lead to less 'medical' forms of addiction...) while pot is not. You ever caffeine withdrawal? Yeah, during that week-long vacation last year when you stopped going to Starbucks every morning. Most of us have gone through that; it is a bit…

I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing for continued criminalization of marijuana.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#87

Post by csmatt »

sharkweek wrote: post #42
jivatmanx wrote: post #19

This, the Parallel Construction story, and the Patriot act having been principally used for the War on Drugs than terror... has made me consider that the War on Drugs may actually be more dangerous to Liberty than the war on terror. No doubt it's basic premise, that putting a substance into one's own body is a "crime", is a pernicious lie. The War on Terror's pernicious lie is twofold: Terrorism isn't a crime, and th…

The Economist rants on this every couple of months, and I couldn't agree more. The war on drugs is a terrible misstep. Drugs should never have been a criminal issue, they should be strictly a public health issue. But we're far too entrenched to make that change now. Watch "The House I Live In" (streaming on Netflix) for a ridiculously detailed picture of the problem

"The House I Live In" was an eye opener for me. Also, one of the directors, David Simon, is the creator of the HBO show 'The Wire' which dealt heavily with the side effects of the war on drugs.

'The Wire' is the first thing I thought of when reading about this story.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#88

Post by genwin »

baddox wrote: post #81
genwin wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can imagine that, because a crack or meth user can't hold down a decent job. Whether legal or not they'd tend to have to rob to get the money to stay high. And when legal it's likely more people would get addicted.

Now you're assuming both that drug abuse would increase if drug prohibition ended and that drugs wouldn't get drastically cheaper. Both are claims you would need to support, and claims I do not believe.

I don't think it would matter how cheap it is. Even at a dollar a hit a jobless person tends to need to steal to get that dollar, in addition to money for food.

I don't think it's a stretch to believe that legal things become more prevalent than illegal things, especially highly addictive things. Believing that requires no more support than disbelieving that.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#89

Post by zackmorris »

dllthomas wrote: post #84
qwerty_asdf wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck. How do you boycott a backbone network provider thatmay ultimately service your chosen ISP anyway? Sure, you harm their consumer and residential retail operations, but that won't cripple their business to business operations, which is where all the real money is anyway.

Mesh networks?

I wish Hacker News had a wiki somewhere listing the most promising solutions to the top issues hackers care about. So like, best off-the-shelf mesh network hardware, best form of encryption, best $5 microcontroller with usb and/or bluetooth and or wifi, stuff like that.

If I could just get these things cheaply and easily, I would gladly use them. Right now so many of them seem more experimental than ubiquitous.

Re: AT&T gives DEA 26 years of phone call records to wage war on drugs

#90

Post by jlgreco »

dllthomas wrote: post #86
jlgreco wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of those things, except "stimulant" technically, can be said of pot too. Hell, caffeine is physically addictive (not to even get into the lifestyles you can build around it that lead to less 'medical' forms of addiction...) while pot is not. You ever caffeine withdrawal? Yeah, during that week-long vacation last year when you stopped going to Starbucks every morning. Most of us have gone through that; it is a bit…

I don't think anyone in this thread is arguing for continued criminalization of marijuana.

I know, that is why I used marijuana as my example.

@whyleyc is asserting that drug "hardness", not drug prohibition, is the cause of the societal harm associated with drugs. I am pointing out that we see similar harm with marijuana, which everyone here accepts as not "hard", but which is prohibited.

It therefore stands to reason that if prohibition can cause harm to society with a "non-hard" drug like marijuana, it would cause harm to society with a "non-hard" drug like caffeine.

Post reply on HN