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

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

#161

Post by shitlord » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

mrinterweb wrote: post #14

So assuming worst case scenario that the DEA actually was able to make a whole bunch of arrests based on this historical data, would we really want to pay to jail that many more inmates? What could be the point of this?

> would we really want to pay to jail that many more inmates?

I would much rather have some of these people in prison than in society. Bomb makers, drug lords, and other violent types absolutely deserve to be put in prison (regardless of the internet's incessant whining about the drug war).

edit: As an observation, whenever any sort of political thread comes on HN, the comments overwhelmingly tend to be paranoid horseshit. This is not a judgment about the parent comment, just the entire thread in general.

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

#162

Post by shawn-furyan » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:09 PM UTC

genwin wrote: post #159

shawn-furyan wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But why would it be criminalized? For that to be justified it needs to be a drain on society in some significant way. Substance bans do not /at all/ have a track record of being grounded in quantifiable measures of societal harm. That is to say, the current substance restriction policies are more or less completely arbitrary. The arbitrariness of current policies gives a natural experiment opportunity to assess the…

> At least in the case of marijuana, the cure seems to be significantly worse than the disease. Agreed, I'm talking about justifying criminalization in an ideal way, not the current way. > The idea that you can squash a market with inelastic demand is soundly dispelled by all current and historical attempts at doing so. The demand comes after the addiction. Remove addiction and the demand is reduced. > This is an out…

>> The idea that you can squash a market with inelastic demand is soundly dispelled by all current and historical attempts at doing so.

> The demand comes after the addiction. Remove addiction and the demand is reduced.

To me the latter statement reads like: "If you can create a perpetual motion machine then energy would be free"

This is the very problem, using impossible potential ends to justify means.

>> This is an outcome that clearly cannot be brought about by the war on drugs...

> That's the current war, not the one based on evidence. What if the evidence showed that a different war could improve society on average and reduce hard drug usage? For example, instead of taking away a user's property and imprisoning them, you give them rehab and (if needed) job skills and actually find them a job, and any other assistance that costs less to provide than the monetary value of the drain on society they'd otherwise be?

Maybe I'm just a pessimist, but I don't see anything that's at all hinted at a remotely workable solution that would have such an effect. You seem to be assuming that we can somehow overcome all of the imperfections of past policies but do not offer a clear, strong novel mechanism by which that can happen. In the meantime our current policies are enormously destructive, and I see that as the more pressing issue. Really, solving addiction and substance abuse is a problem that is not very closely related to criminalization policies, but it's those criminalization policies that are leading to broad 4th Ammendment violations, police militarization, and unnecessary deaths and incarcerations.

[edited to remove the implication that no solution was offered, but rather that a new solution wasn't offered that could reasonably be expected to end addiction and substance abuse in a significant way]

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

#163

Post by rdl » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:10 PM UTC

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.

I think when you're boycotting a huge company, you can just avoid them where possible. If you can't tell if the company is a vendor to a vendor, that's ok. It doesn't need to be a material impact on their financials -- just the marketing and PR value which keeps the issue in place is important, and maybe it keeps smaller companies from playing along, too.

I'd probably not buy transit from them, certainly not when given a choice (I'd obviously still peer/etc. if I needed routes to ATT), too.

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

#164

Post by ballard » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:15 PM UTC

prawn wrote: post #143

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…

Is the War on Drugs just modernised slavery? Privatised prison system with the profit-based incentives to take on more and more prisoners.

Most slaves turn a profit, while most prisons require funding.

Prisons are garbage processors for grinding up as many undesirables as possible, for as long as possible. Whom is chosen is somewhat random, but usually people that are undesirable: ugly or antisocial. As for the minor point of finding guilt: a crime can always be found, so that's not a limiting factor.

The majority have already volunteered to be slaves. Healthcare and visa status the whips for native and immigrant employees respectively, especially in the US. Debt and consumption alike further captivate these unfortunate creatures on an unending treadmill of pseudo-affluence they will never attain.

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

#165

Post by genwin » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:17 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #144

genwin wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don't know what the percentage is for crack Then stop talking out of your ass and do some research before machine-gunning the thread.

Yours is a rude form of disagreement, is all. Your comments elsewhere:

> This isn't going to happen because a bunch of people in line at an airport isn't a high-value target.

Can you point to research?

> I mean it would suck, of course, but 'bunch of people get blown up at an airport' isn't nearly as worrying as 'large plane falls/is steered out of the sky and into downtown.'

Proof that it isn't as worrying?

> It doesn't have much value to terrorists because it's not as scary and it won't generate vast numbers of photographs.

How do you know it's not as scary? Have you measured?

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

#166

Post by consider_this » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:22 PM UTC

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.

You don't need to boycott AT&T, although, that would be nice.

They, Google, Level 3, etc. all own so much of the network backbones...it's impossible not to route through an adversarial trunk.

The answer is now encryption. End-to-end, and everywhere. Email should be considered as dead as the landline. Secure-IM and chat...along with self-hosted data services[like Owncloud] are the future. Or at least they should be.

Information is power and your adversaries will not give it up, ever. The only way to take that power is to scramble the bits.

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

#167

Post by dragonwriter » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:27 PM UTC

genwin wrote: post #157

pstuart wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

80,000 deaths per year in the US attributed to alcohol: http://www.cdc.gov/alcohol/fact-sheets/alcohol-use.htm It's a dangerous drug. It makes people violent. People drink and drive and kill people. Let's make it illegal too, eh? Drug addiction is a health issue and should be treated as that. Making drugs illegal CREATES MORE CRIME. We could stop this madness if only people would STOP SUPPORTING THE MADNESS. Sorry to…

You seem to be assuming that a war on drugs must make them illegal. It needn't. Instead the war could do whatever is most effective (per dollar spent) at reducing usage. I support rehab for alcoholics, and measures to reduce drunk driving. I don't support the war on drugs in its current form.

> You seem to be assuming that a war on drugs must make them illegal. It needn't. Instead the war could do whatever is most effective (per dollar spent) at reducing usage.

You mean, it could be legalization, taxation, and using taxes to fund intervention, referral, and treatment programs, and not be opposed to legalization at all?

If so, then its obviously not what people supporting legalization are arguing against when they are arguing againt the War on Drugs.

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

#168

Post by tracker1 » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:28 PM UTC

zackmorris wrote: post #89

dllthomas wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It seems to me that what you are really looking for is an opion based stack-exchange site.

http://stackexchange.com/sites

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

#169

Post by genwin » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:31 PM UTC

shawn-furyan wrote: post #162

genwin wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least in the case of marijuana, the cure seems to be significantly worse than the disease. Agreed, I'm talking about justifying criminalization in an ideal way, not the current way. > The idea that you can squash a market with inelastic demand is soundly dispelled by all current and historical attempts at doing so. The demand comes after the addiction. Remove addiction and the demand is reduced. > This is an out…

>> The idea that you can squash a market with inelastic demand is soundly dispelled by all current and historical attempts at doing so. > The demand comes after the addiction. Remove addiction and the demand is reduced. To me the latter statement reads like: "If you can create a perpetual motion machine then energy would be free" This is the very problem, using impossible potential ends to justify means. >> This is a…

> You seem to be assuming that we can somehow overcome all of the imperfections of past policies but do not offer a clear, strong novel mechanism by which that can happen.

Actually I think what I propose has nil chance of becoming reality in my lifetime and maybe for centuries in the future, if only because the masses wouldn't support it. That doesn't stop me from supporting the best possible solution to hard drug addiction.

I support ending the current war on drugs almost wholesale, because it's so inefficient and even unconstitutional as you note. But I'd concurrently want to see some movement toward the ideal. I definitely don't buy an argument that nothing better can be done now than ending the war on drugs in its current form. I believe there's always room for improvement even within the confines our current misguided society. Maybe I'm an optimistic pessimist?

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

#170

Post by tdfx » Tue, Sep 03, 2013, 11:33 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #121

baddox wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

By the same logic, the price of food should correlate to the number of crimes committed to obtain it. But far more is spent on food than drugs, and most theft is to buy drugs, so something is different. The difference is that normal people work at jobs to obtain money for food, but serious drug addicts are incapable of working a regular job and so have to steal to support their drug habit (and for their food as well)…

There's a huge segment of "serious drug addicts" in our population that show exactly what crack and meth users would be like if their drugs of choice were legalized: it's called Alcoholics Anonymous. Are you equally concerned about being robbed and beaten by an alcoholic? Their drug of choice has been legal for quite some time.