AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal

["David Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
Subject: [Dewayne-Net] AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal
Date: October 25, 2016 at 10:13:54 AM EDT
To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com

[Note:  This item comes from friend David Isenberg.  DLH]

AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal
The telecom giant is doing NSA-style work for law enforcement—without a warrant—and earning millions of dollars a year 
from taxpayers.
By KENNETH LIPP
Oct 25 2016
<http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/10/25/at-t-is-spying-on-americans-for-profit.html>

On Nov. 11, 2013, Victorville, California, sheriff’s deputies and a coroner responded to a motorcyclist’s report of 
human remains outside of town.

They identified the partially bleached skull of a child, and later discovered the remains of the McStay family who had 
been missing for the past three years. Joseph, 40, his wife Summer, 43, Gianni, 4, and Joseph Jr., 3, had been 
bludgeoned to death and buried in shallow graves in the desert.

Investigators long suspected Charles Merritt in the family’s disappearance, interviewing him days after they went 
missing. Merritt was McStay’s business partner and the last person known to see him alive. Merritt had also borrowed 
$30,000 from McStay to cover a gambling debt, a mutual business partner told police. None of it was enough to make an 
arrest.

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.

These new revelations come as the company seeks to acquire Time Warner in the face of vocal opposition saying the deal 
would be bad for consumers. Donald Trump told supporters over the weekend he would kill the acquisition if he’s elected 
president; Hillary Clinton has urged regulators to scrutinize the deal.

While telecommunications companies are legally obligated to hand over records, AT&T appears to have gone much further 
to make the enterprise profitable, according to ACLU technology policy analyst Christopher Soghoian.

“Companies have to give this data to law enforcement upon request, if they have it. AT&T doesn’t have to data-mine its 
database to help police come up with new numbers to investigate,” Soghoian said.

AT&T has a unique power to extract information from its metadata because it retains so much of it. The company owns 
more than three-quarters of U.S. landline switches, and the second largest share of the nation’s wireless 
infrastructure and cellphone towers, behind Verizon. AT&T retains its cell tower data going back to July 2008, longer 
than other providers. Verizon holds records for a year and Sprint for 18 months, according to a 2011 retention schedule 
obtained by The Daily Beast.

The disclosure of Hemisphere was not the first time AT&T has been caught working with law enforcement above and beyond 
what the law requires.

Special cooperation with the government to conduct surveillance dates back to at least 2003, when AT&T ordered 
technician Mark Klein to help the National Security Agency install a bug directly into its main San Francisco internet 
exchange point, Room 641A. The company invented a programming language to mine its own records for surveillance, and in 
2007 came under fire for handing these mined records over to the FBI. That same year Hemisphere was born.

[snip]




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