SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @03:10PM
Incorrect. Law enforcement agencies need a warrant to compel AT&T to provide them with data for investigations, but no warrant is required if the information is volunteered.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:07PM
What? A self-confident loudmouth idiot doesn't actually have even the most basic understanding of a topic, but he decides to make definitive proclamations about it, and other idiots of the same feather take him at his word?
That's never happened on soylent before!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @05:13PM
And yet it's how you got modded up to 0 points. Go figure.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday October 26 2016, @05:23PM
Why yes, you certanly are a self-confident loudmouth idiot doesn't actually have even the most basic understanding of the topic.
Maybe you should learn something [propublica.org] before spouting off about others.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @07:33PM
You seem to be accusing me of the same ignorance that bradling is guilty of..
And yet your proof is an article that literally says bradling is wrong.
Authorities can often obtain your emails and texts by going to Google or AT&T with a court order that doesn't require showing probable cause of a crime.
And it doesn't even mention voluntary cooperation which, as has already been mentioned, negates the need for even a court order (and to be explicit, court orders are administrative, basically rubber-stamped by court clerks, the judge never even sees them).
So, no, I'm not an ignorant fool like bradling. I do know my shit. But now I wonder about you.
(Score: 2) by Anal Pumpernickel on Thursday October 27 2016, @08:01AM
That is what the courts currently seem to believe. Unfortunately, in an age where corporations have lots of data about you and are readily willing to share it with the government, that way of thinking makes it pretty much impossible to keep the government from obtaining quite a bit of information about you. Requiring a warrant to access data about someone--even if the corporation is willing to give it away--is not only reasonable, but necessary if we wish to live in a free society [gnu.org].