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

arstechnica.com

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

#111

Post by mpyne »

toyg wrote: post #55
mpyne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now you know why David Simon was one of the few people speaking up about why PRISM wasn't really a big deal, as he has seen firsthand the effect of the War of Drugs on minorities through his work on The Wire . If the government should have the power to do these types of investigations (and the people keep voting people in who are 'Tough on Crime' so apparently they feel the government should have that power...),…

> as he has seen firsthand the effect of the War of Drugs on minorities through his work on The Wire Or rather through his 16 years as journalist on the police beat at the Baltimore Sun , from which he got enough material to write 3 books and 3 TV series, including The Wire . It's really weird how TV just outshines everything else as soon as it gets in the picture. Simon will forever be "the guy who wrote The Wire",…

> Or rather through his 16 years as journalist on the police beat at the Baltimore Sun

You know I almost mentioned that, but then I had the horrifying thought that he might have had someone on the police beat on his production team and that it may not have been Simon himself with that experience, and I didn't want to spout anything factually incorrect so I left it out completely.

I'm glad to be corrected on that, hopefully I'll remember for the next time it comes up.

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

#112

Post by dwiel »

genwin wrote: post #101
warfangle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're expecting levels of drug abuse to rise with deregulation, let me just point you to ... well, everywhere that's deregulated drugs.

Is crack or meth legal in any modern country, after being illegal?

Portugal

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

#113

Post by genwin »

baddox wrote: post #104
genwin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't think it would matter how cheap it is. I don't see how that's defensible. You seem to be talking only about people with zero money, which is few people even among jobless (even homeless ) people. Surely the price of the drug, all else being equal, would strongly correlate to the number of crimes committed to obtain the drug. > I don't think it's a stretch to believe that legal things become more prevalent t…

> Surely the price of the drug, all else being equal, would strongly correlate to the number of crimes committed to obtain the drug.

You have a good point there. If I was wrong and crack and meth became dirt cheap and there was no long associated violent crime and robbery, to no longer support a war on it I'd have to see that its legality lead to no significant drain on society in other ways. That would include parenting, job performance, accidents / injuries, etc.

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

#114

Post by mpyne »

jlgreco wrote: post #57
mpyne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now you know why David Simon was one of the few people speaking up about why PRISM wasn't really a big deal, as he has seen firsthand the effect of the War of Drugs on minorities through his work on The Wire . If the government should have the power to do these types of investigations (and the people keep voting people in who are 'Tough on Crime' so apparently they feel the government should have that power...),…

The jump from "The War on Drugs is worse than PRISM" to "PRISM really isn't a big deal" is rather large... "If the government should have the power to do these types of investigations..." See, they obviously shouldn't. Justifying PRISM because the DEA is doing something that they shouldn't is silly. Both deserve criticism, and we should not curtail criticism of PRISM just because the War on Drugs isn't getting nearly…

> Both deserve criticism, and we should not curtail criticism of PRISM just because the War on Drugs isn't getting nearly the criticism it deserves.

I would agree that both deserve equitable argumentation.

However the choices appear to be to completely upend the way the legal system and law enforcement handles investigations (which the people have voted against time after time), or to keep the systems that exist and tighten the oversight and transparency.

I suppose your choice on that will fall towards whether you are more distrustful of the government or crooks. But essentially the same logic would appear to apply to both.

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

#116

Post by dragonwriter »

genwin wrote: post #88
baddox wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I don't think it would matter how cheap it is.

The level of crime (and particularly, the level of violent and organized crime) surrounding alcohol jumped up sharply with prohibition, and dropped back down with the end of prohibition. I don't see why you'd expect that to be any different for any other drug.

> Even at a dollar a hit a jobless person tends to need to steal to get that dollar, in addition to money for food.

If its legal, a person has less social pressure to not to admit use, and therefore there are less social pressures against them admitting their problem and seeking treatment before being compelled to as a consequence of criminal activity.

Further, when becoming involved with a substance as a user makes you a criminal and violator of societies rules, there is less holding you to observe those rules once you have decided to violate them in the first place.

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

#117

Post by mindslight »

jlgreco wrote: post #57
mpyne wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now you know why David Simon was one of the few people speaking up about why PRISM wasn't really a big deal, as he has seen firsthand the effect of the War of Drugs on minorities through his work on The Wire . If the government should have the power to do these types of investigations (and the people keep voting people in who are 'Tough on Crime' so apparently they feel the government should have that power...),…

The jump from "The War on Drugs is worse than PRISM" to "PRISM really isn't a big deal" is rather large... "If the government should have the power to do these types of investigations..." See, they obviously shouldn't. Justifying PRISM because the DEA is doing something that they shouldn't is silly. Both deserve criticism, and we should not curtail criticism of PRISM just because the War on Drugs isn't getting nearly…

> people who get frustrated with recent attention to surveillance because "Of course this is going on, haven't you heard of Room 641A? I've been talking about this for years!

> Grrr, I am upset that I am no longer unique for my suspicions."

The first part is entirely true, but the second part is a misplaced caricature. If one wasn't operating with this threat model pre-Snowden, they mustn't have been analyzing the situation too hard.

The people who saw the Snowden revelations as inevitable had to endure being buzzkills for the past several years while everyone else leaped at the chance to party with the "cool kids" as geeks entered the limelight. It was clear that Apple's/Facebook's/Twitter's advances were primarily in the marketing department, but it was easy to ignore this to avoid being negative when you're finally gaining long-craved social acceptance.

Now that the herdthink has shifted towards privacy, we're seeing the same wishful marketing being applied to a lot of non-solutions to privacy (encrypting servers like Lavabit, remote code like Hushmail, facades of anonymity like Bitcoin, etc), when the reality is that solving (as opposed to merely obfuscating) these problems is extremely hard and any solution requires users to start taking a modicum of responsibility for their computing environment. But lowest-common-denominator faux solutions cannot address this inconvenient truth, so they give people the illusion of doing something while wasting away this iteration's outrage.

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

#118

Post by jlgreco »

genwin wrote: post #101
warfangle wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're expecting levels of drug abuse to rise with deregulation, let me just point you to ... well, everywhere that's deregulated drugs.

Is crack or meth legal in any modern country, after being illegal?

Portugual decriminalized drug use and saw decreases in drug-related crime, increased addiction program enrollment, decreased youth use of drugs, decreased drug-related deaths, and decreased HIV infection rates.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_of_Portugal

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

#119

Post by genwin »

jlgreco wrote: post #108
genwin wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd include a lot of legal drugs in my war on drugs!

You would intensify the pursuit of criminal prosecution of people who find themselves addicted to prescription painkillers? An addiction to morphine is really little different than an addiction to heroin, except society has a greater understanding of addiction to morphine as an illness, not a crime. Treating morphine abusers like we treat heroin users would be devastating to society. It would be a ludicrously sensele…

> You would intensify the pursuit of criminal prosecution of people who find themselves addicted to prescription painkillers?

No, rehab for them and all other people addicted to hard drugs. I'd seek criminal prosecution against the pushers who knew or should've known the drugs hurt much more than they help.

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

#120

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

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.

Do you know a lot of meth users? I've known a few who held down jobs. And then there is every person who takes Adderall. Personally, I've taken Adderall for more than a decade, and found it easier to hold down a job with it than before.
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