Phone and Email Data-Mining Used in War on Drugs, Too
December 18th, 2007The headline should be: Phone and Email Data-Mining Used in __________ (Fill in the blank)
Via: Wired:
Do not let it be said that the Bush administration forgot the War on Drugs while waging the War on Terror.
The Drug Enforcement Agency, for one, continued and expanded the data mining records of phone calls and emails from the United States to Latin American countries in order to catch smugglers, according to the New York Times. The program began under President Clinton in he 1990s and expanded under President Bush.
Officials say the government has not listened to the communications, but has instead used phone numbers and e-mail addresses to analyze links between people in the United States and overseas. Senior Justice Department officials in the Bush and Clinton administrations signed off on the operation, which uses broad administrative subpoenas but does not require court approval to demand the records.
At least one major phone carrier — whose identity could not be confirmed — refused to cooperate, citing concerns in 2004 that the subpoenas were overly broad, government and industry officials said. The executives also worried that if the program were exposed, the company would face a public-relations backlash.
As Timesmen Eric Lichtblau, James Risen and Scott Shane pointed out in their Sunday story, the drug data mining is just one more example of how cozy the nation’s giant telecommunications companies and the government’s cops and spies remain.
Damned straight! Can’t have private enterprise drug smugglers competing with the CIA ones.
Bullseye Pook.
I’ve been using the ” protecting market-share” term to describe my feelings about the current iteration of the Nixonian “War on Drugs” since the paraquat days of Saturday Night Live and the great house cleaning of the Ford presidency.
It was already obvious enough as a strategy back then, to any wanna-be intellectual type like yours truly who was reading volatile stuff from the likes of Galeano, Zinn, and Sun Tzu — and already connecting a few dots relative to the strategies of capital.
Despite this, it still took me another decade to fully escape the tentacles of expectation and start calling my own shots. And damned-near twenty more years to effect a full escape, albeit from the arms of superpower into the land of its conception and subversion; the land of Frankfurt and Hamburg, of Rothschild and Warburg.
All the while, I’ve maintained my own “war on idiocy,” which largely involved pointing a long, bony finger at the various elephants in America’s living room. Finally gave up on that a few years back, when I realized that my efforts to that end were just about as effective as said drug war.
Although my disparaging statement there is also misleading, as humorous and poignant as I’d like it to be. In terms of protetcting market share, they’re probably enjoying success. Judging by the plunge rate of the stories of the two fallen transport aircraft full of contraband down the memory hole, I’d suggest that their success rate at knocking down independent competition in the industry is likely quite high.
The grandest ironies of all are to be mined from the familial history underlying the business, and the cash connections to several of the world’s largest piles of of raw, steaming power and the attendant hoard of liquid and not-so-liquid ducats each perches atop like the dragon Smaug.
The rise of much of America’s earliest “wealth” was a by-product of other wars. The war to collect human chattel in West Africa. The war to addict millions of Chinese. The war to import as much heroin as is physically possible out of each new producing region as they come online. The war on regular folks playing the “escape” card, rather than on the hopelessly corrupt bastards atop the system who use the “war” metaphor so often and so badly.
The whole thing leaves this kid craving a quiet evening, a small stash of something fresh and green and a steaming carafe of homemade herbal infusion on the wood stovem by way of relaxing into a less inhibited mental space for a few hours.
I once thought it would be fun to add “shaman” to my business card template for laughs, to see what kind of reaction it would receive. But I’m not giving many out these days, here on the farm.
Miraculix wrote: “The grandest ironies of all are to be mined from the familial history underlying the business, and the cash connections to several of the world’s largest piles of of raw, steaming power and the attendant hoard of liquid and not-so-liquid ducats each perches atop like the dragon Smaug.”
Lyrical! Love it.
Time to pull out my stained and worn copies of Lord of the Rings and reread them for, oh, perhaps the 8th time since the early 70s. I like to escape to the comforting fantasy of good triumphing over evil.