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Even after the gravesite was discovered and McStay's DNA was found inside Merritt's vehicle, police were far from pinning the quadruple homicide on him.
Until they turned to Project Hemisphere.
Hemisphere is a secretive program run by AT&T that searches trillions of call records and analyzes cellular data to determine where a target is located, with whom he speaks, and potentially why.
"Merritt was in a position to access the cellular telephone tower northeast of the McStay family gravesite on February 6th, 2010, two days after the family disappeared," an affidavit for his girlfriend's call records reports Hemisphere finding (PDF). Merritt was arrested almost a year to the date after the McStay family's remains were discovered, and is awaiting trial for the murders.
In 2013, Hemisphere was revealed by The New York Times and described only within a Powerpoint presentation made by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Times described it as a "partnership" between AT&T and the U.S. government; the Justice Department said it was an essential, and prudently deployed, counter-narcotics tool.
However, AT&T's own documentation—reported here by The Daily Beast for the first time—shows Hemisphere was used far beyond the war on drugs to include everything from investigations of homicide to Medicaid fraud.
Hemisphere isn't a "partnership" but rather a product AT&T developed, marketed, and sold at a cost of millions of dollars per year to taxpayers. No warrant is required to make use of the company's massive trove of data, according to AT&T documents, only a promise from law enforcement to not disclose Hemisphere if an investigation using it becomes public.
So, AT&T's one stipulation is a pinky swear with law enforcement that their program won't cause them public embarrassment.
(Score: 4, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:49PM
This just confirms what we have known for quite some time. I remember the article on /. about sale of lots of high speed storage and DSP hardware to the NSA (or was it CIA?) from Texas Memory Systems and the connection to the rumored Room 641A at AT&T. URL:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A>
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @05:10PM
In their defense their name is three letters.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 26 2016, @08:32PM
They are all three letters:
NSA
CIA
ATT
TMS
HFS! (Holy fuckin shit!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @10:54PM
USA
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Wednesday October 26 2016, @11:21PM
It's a conspiracy!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @12:11AM
OMG
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Thursday October 27 2016, @01:51AM
WTF? TMI!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 27 2016, @02:26AM
WTF? TMI!
M-O-U-S-E