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Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

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Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#51

Post by dannypgh »

NotAtWork wrote: post #19
kavabean wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the main thrust of your comment but perpetuating the 'immaculate conception' myth of the US as a government of, for, and by the people is counterproductive. In particular the war on drugs absolutely goes against the ideas 'espoused' at that time. But that still holds. Ask any senator what America stands for and they will say something like "liberty, freedom, and justice for all". That doesn't mean it is…

> makes it very clear that the new constitutional system must be designed so as to insure that the government will, in his words "protect the minority of the opulent against the majority" and bar the way to anything like agrarian reform My point wasn't that this didn't happen or the US was some magical egalitarian wonderland (though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compare…

"though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods"

You must be excluding both the African slaves and indigenous American population from your analysis.

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#52

Post by tim333 »

tacotime wrote: post #50
tim333 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wikipedia has: "Limited Distribution, Proprietary, Originator Controlled, Law Enforcement Sensitive were designations the Pentagon attempted in 2011 to exempt from President Obama's Executive Order 13556" Executive Order 13556 "Controlled Unclassified Information" required a public registry of such information and that the registry and implementing directives would be available to the public.

woah, I hadn't even considered that the term has an explicit legal definition. Scary stuff. Protect and serve the people but do it behind closed doors because the people can't handle the truth, right? Problem is the people can't make an informed vote on something they don't know about. The line between democracy and fascism is a fine one and I feel more like our government's mission is creeping in a definite directio…

My impression was Obama had issued the executive order to make public "controlled unclassified information" so the guys used a euphemism so if taken to court they could they had no undeclared controlled unclassified information. Sensitive information maybe but not controlled.

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#53

Post by eli »

tptacek wrote: post #24
eli wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, this seems to be a different (newer?) version of the same slide deck the NYTimes published.

The NYT seems to describe the slide deck, down to the case studies at the end.

It's buried in a tiny link, but they actually published the deck with the article: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/02/us/hemisphere-...

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#54

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

ProAm wrote: post #16
dicroce wrote: post #8

Our country is full of police departments that fund themselves through seizures of drug money, that they know about by using data our intelligence services collected on us. I wonder who's using the phone data to buy and sell stocks? Maybe that's what they'll get into once we legalize marijuana.

There are easier ways for the government to make money. There is a strong belief the CIA was selling drugs to citizens in the 80s to fund themselves [1] [1] http://www.justice.gov/oig/special/9712/ch01p1.htm

McCoy addresses this theory in his book: The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. His conclusion was that the CIA appreciated having a little no-strings-attached pocket change, but that it wasn't funding them in a meaningful way, and that their involvement in the drug trade was more for the access that it gave them to shady people.

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#55

Post by malandrew »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #49
salmonellaeater wrote: post #7

It's chilling that they explicitly mention parallel construction on page 12: When a complete set of CDRs are subpoenaed from the carrier, then all memorialized references to relevant and pertinent calls can be attributed to the carrier's records, thus "walling off" the information obtained from Hemisphere. In other words, Hemisphere can easily be protected if it is used as a pointer system to uncover relevant numbers…

Here's the deal. If you work for an agency like the NSA or ONDCP as either a contractor or a full-time employee, and you're aware of a program like this, and you do not act to disclose it to the press and/or subvert it, then... Hell, I'm not even going to finish that thought. If I do, it will seem redundant to someone with a conscience, and legally actionable otherwise.

... you're not upholding the Constitution of the United States, which you took and oath to defend.

The oath to protect the constitution against all enemies, both foreign and domestic should take precedence over any oaths to individual institutions that derive their raison d'etre from the Constitution itself. Without the Constitution, there is no United States of America. Without the United States of America, there is no Department of Defense. Without the DoD, there is no NSA or ONDCP.

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#56

Post by mixologic »

This is a database of call detail records (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record) and the numbers they have called, and numbers that have called them. It does not contain subscriber data (names, account information) - just metadata about calls.

They use this database to find cycled phone numbers that have similar calling patterns. (Phone number 1 tends to make and receive calls from number 2, 4, 9 and 13. in geographic area X) Phone number 1 stops making calls, and phone number 50 starts making/receiving calls to 2, 4, 9, and 13 in area Y. So they can assume that whomever owns 50 is the same person that used to own 1 and now they're in area Y.

Maybe Im just being clueless today, but can anybody explain to me what is so chilling about this system? I don't see where it can really be abused unless you've got some stalker that works for LA's DEA and they're trying to find out their estranged ex-wife's new phone number?

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#58

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

mixologic wrote: post #56

This is a database of call detail records ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record ) and the numbers they have called, and numbers that have called them. It does not contain subscriber data (names, account information) - just metadata about calls. They use this database to find cycled phone numbers that have similar calling patterns. (Phone number 1 tends to make and receive calls from number 2, 4, 9 and 13.…

Subscriber data is easily matched, as mentioned in the slides. It advises law enforcement officers and other judicial officials to perjure themselves. There have been enough discussions about the value of metadata for identifying people that one should have an opinion by now as to whether it is a violation of one's rights for the gov't to collect it indiscriminately.

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#59

Post by alexbecker »

mixologic wrote: post #56

This is a database of call detail records ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record ) and the numbers they have called, and numbers that have called them. It does not contain subscriber data (names, account information) - just metadata about calls. They use this database to find cycled phone numbers that have similar calling patterns. (Phone number 1 tends to make and receive calls from number 2, 4, 9 and 13.…

When you have the entire call graph, it's almost trivial to match it up to names. And then you know who everyone calls and who calls them, which I would argue is almost as fundamental an affront to privacy as knowing the actual content.

Re: Hemisphere Project Summary: Office of National Drug Control Policy [pdf]

#60

Post by mixologic »

alexbecker wrote: post #59
mixologic wrote: post #56

This is a database of call detail records ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call_detail_record ) and the numbers they have called, and numbers that have called them. It does not contain subscriber data (names, account information) - just metadata about calls. They use this database to find cycled phone numbers that have similar calling patterns. (Phone number 1 tends to make and receive calls from number 2, 4, 9 and 13.…

When you have the entire call graph, it's almost trivial to match it up to names. And then you know who everyone calls and who calls them, which I would argue is almost as fundamental an affront to privacy as knowing the actual content.

Law enforcement doesn't have the entire call graph. They have a service, that they can request specific data from, that takes 2-5 days to return the requested information, which is pretty much only "additional phones, and switched phones", and they have to have a subpoena to get that data in the first place. This isnt some google search they can mine for whatever. The 2-5 day lag is almost certainly paperwork bureaucracy verifying that they have a legal reason to search the database.

I suppose the folks at the "Hemisphere Regional Data Center" could theoretically match up the names to the phone numbers (not AT ALL trivial - I used to work with credit header data and telco record data - the data quality is an absolute shitshow), but that power certainly is not in the hands of any local law enforcement.

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