What Happens When You Enter the Witness Protection Program? | Hacker News Reader

What Happens When You Enter the Witness Protection Program?

priceonomics.com

109 pointsapsec11259 comments

The rehab part of the story is fascinating: a very low recidivism rate amongst people who have been, by definition, career criminals.

I think a lot of people feel trapped in a life of crime by their past, and in the case of the mafia, by most of their friends and family. If they can get a new past and new surroundings, they may take advantage of the chance to live differently.

This is a version of the same argument that people make about rehabilitation generally: people with a felony conviction find it difficult to get good honest work, and many revert to living and hanging out with the same kind of people who got them in trouble in the first place. Witness protection is an extreme version of what most rehabilitation advocates are suggesting: an opportunity to start with a clean slate (i.e. no felony record that hurts employment), and avoiding bad influences from one's past. The results of witness protection seem to validate these arguments.

I'd say the consequences for violating the witness protection program contract play a huge role in enforcing its respect.

Nitpick, but "by definition" career criminals is incorrect. They are by definition witnesses, 5% or so of whom have done nothing wrong.

If you commit a crime on witness protection you would be cut loose. Then the mob can come and tidy up. Being killed by a mobster is probably pretty good motivation to not commit crimes.

Reminded me of this article (link below with TL;DR). So we have two strong examples of how changing environment can reduce crime and improve lives. Perhaps we should change our current educational and judicial policies?

TL;DR: after hurricaine Katrina, many people who relocated from the lowest-income, highest-crime areas in New Orleans (and many of whom had previous convictions) improved their circumstances--reduced recidivism, higher standards of living, etc. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/24/starting-over-d...

I can't imagine being in a position where I need WP- obviously I couldn't claim where I went to school anymore, would I also need to absolve my claims to my skillset?

Would I have to give up working in my industry, my assorted message board accounts?

> The program also works with doctors and school administrators to transfer medical records and report cards; Shur recounts that he refused several requests to improve a child’s grades.

Sorry, I failed to retain that passage when reading. Does this apply to college/university?

Yes, pretty much. You have a new identity.

Well it seems to me that for a sizable portion of the WP target audience, hiding their prestigious academic pedigree isn't the most pressing issue on their minds. Likewise, in my wholly amateur opinion on the matter, the whole point of WP seems to be that they have to give up their claims to their skill sets - even if they are considered within their professional circles to be world-class, say, body-disposal experts; or have critically acclaimed skills in devising methods to transfer illegal narcotics across international borders.

Cartels and other criminal organizations aren't in the stone age- they regularly and routinely abduct, if not blackmail, professionals that suit their purposes.

I get it- you're trying to paint a privileged vs un-privileged picture despite my admission I'm lucky enough to have received an education.

Well, no, that's not what I meant - I was merely jesting about my hunch that the majority of people in WP are 'high level' criminals rather than the tech guy or accountant. Of course there are a few like that, and yes, they'd probably have to find another job - or at least re-establish credentials in the field from 0.

I would think the accountant would be exactly the sort of person who would be in witness protection.

I know the Mexican cartels are now abducting microwave transmission and cell network technicians to run their comms networks. No doubt it'll be microsat experts next (less trudging around).

I wonder when the cartels will start running rocket companies. Or startup accelerators.

They already run submarines.

I guess they already have. Or, at least their money has been put into these business, if they don't directly manage them.

Interesting. Do you have any links about that? I would really like to know if cartels are really investing in space technology, and what companies in particular. Or did you mean that the money made on war on drugs is put to that use?

Sorry to disappoint you but I am just making wild guesses. You don't need to be an expert in technology to invest in technology companies. After all those "unicorns" earning tons of money for their early investors, I don't think a cartel would be any less intrigued than ordinary rich people.

Tech guys and accountants for such enterprises are high level.

They must obviously be in the know and they are given a lot of trust.

> Cartels and other criminal organizations aren't in the stone age- they regularly and routinely abduct, if not blackmail, professionals that suit their purposes.

There is even easier way - hire them.

Am I the only person who is thinking... okay, if I am the mob, I'll hack hundreds of these underfunded school districts, and watch for kids with identical grades who transfer in, whose parents have no credit history, and where the (without loss of generality) father's name is Eric (for families I'd just use the intersection of all their first initials)? That's _plenty_ of information, and you add in that the fake identities will keep the same age for children and same-ish age for the adults, and I'd bet my bottom dollar it's uniquely identifying.

Surely these days they give them a digital presence, including a same-ish-credit-rating-different-details credit history. That's just too much to leave out in 2015.

I don't think the mob has the skills to perform an operation on this scale for an uncertain payoff. They might be willing to pay someone else for information about someone they happen to be interested in. But a fishing expedition that is outside their area of expertise. Not likely.

It's also just WAY too much work to kill an informant using that method, unless it's a big time boss. In which case they'd use other ways to try and skip trace them instead of setting up an enormous botnet of hacked school networks, which doesn't sound trivial whatsoever. This is the mob, not a black hat hacker shop with billions of dollars to spend on SIGINT.

You think mobsters can't learn black hat infosec?

If someone did do that, I think we'd probably know about it. The chance of getting caught hacking a school district like that is tiny - but accumulate hundreds of tiny chances and detection is almost certain.

If you're good and/or committed enough to maintain hundreds of covert hacking operations, though, there are likely better options. How about deploying facial recognition at scale on the Internet? I hear they're pretty awful compared to humans at identifying people from limited data, such as a few grainy surveillance photos... but if you already know who you're looking for and have many high resolution photos of them, it would only take one good shot of them in their new life to be uploaded to the Internet - maybe in the background of someone else's photo, or even a frame of a nice HD video - and I suspect computers would be up to the task of making the match.

I am skeptical about the first part (the second part, about facial recognition, seems good, and at this point might just be a budget issue -- that to comb through the low quality results manually given current software would take too many man-hours).

I have seen IT for school districts. It's often one person, who has an insane number of demands on their time, no resources, and no specialized knowledge in security, building a number of systems that handle sensitive and non-sensitive data the district cares about. Given how homogeneous that situation is, evading detection consistently seems... extremely doable. And being caught 1% of the time means they have access to 99% of the networks -- they aren't magicians, there wouldn't be a clear way to intuit the larger context. If they all use e.g. web based grading software, and that gets 0-day'd, your 'almost certain' estimate gets readjusted by quite a lot too, and that's not a crazy thing to have happen either.

  - I'll hack hundreds of these underfunded school districts

The idea that you, or the mob would hack any school district, let alone "hundreds" is dubious. Precisely how? From one school district to the next, you'll have what to hack? What degree of variety would that involve in terms of the diversity of systems. Systems that are already hardened to withstand the pranks of script kiddies?

And where to start? All of the small towns first? Distributed geographically, and with varying connection speeds? And none of them have any level of intrusion detection, or malware defenses at all? I suppose you'll spear phish thousands of school staff members and no one will notice that, and surely it has nothing to do with witness intimidation.

This assumes that all witnesses have children. What if they don't?

Also, keep in mind this was in the 1960's and on into the 1990's so, computers then, were not what they are today. And since the 80's the mob has ceased to be what it was back then, for the most part. Now, really, it's gangs and drug rings, moreso than the mobsters being busted prior to the 90's.

  - watch for kids with identical grades

Uh, right. Not really. Identical? How does that work, when the teachers are different? Why would you assume performance would be equal during a massive distracting disruption to one's life? Even "statistically identical" (if that's even a thing, though I doubt it, when it comes to public school grading systems) is a stretch.

  - parents have no credit history

Okay, how is that going to shake out? So, assuming you've "hacked" your zillions of "school districts" and now the subset of children have parents, you'll run your free credit report on all suspicious families? Okay, I guess... I mean sure... and then no credit history for some. Except there's still this thing with the school records. Combing the earth for people with no credit history doesn't sound realistic unless you can narrow the search to less than one hundred specific targets. Anything above that number sounds silly, and would draw attention.

  - use the intersection of all their first initials

Probably the only part that holds water. Except you're operating based on knowledge from the article that you've benefited from, so this gets eliminated, because as an outsider, you wouldn't be able to assume awareness of this detail. You might notice it, after the search has narrowed, but without having this knowledge in advance, I doubt it would be useful information.

  - same age for children and same-ish age for the adults

Yes, you'd be able to use this.

  - they give them a digital presence

Doubt it. These are people who know all too well how wire taps work. Doing this for a protected witness would be profoundly stupid. Contrary to popular belief, life after the internet does still exist. Sacrilege to say such a thing on HN, I know, but it's true. I can feel the wrankled eyebrows from the other side of the internet as I type this.

  - including a credit history

I think they said in the article, they do not do this. At all. The point being that this would be government intrusion on private business, severely complicating matters of fraud investigation, and more. Even now, today, in 2015 there are people completely without credit history. And so what? They can't buy a house or a car or maybe a luxurious high-end cell phone financed with a contract? Honestly, these are minor details in a small person's life.

"The idea that you, or the mob would hack any school district, let alone "hundreds" is dubious. Precisely how? From one school district to the next, you'll have what to hack? What degree of variety would that involve in terms of the diversity of systems."

Then, I suppose that you need to hack clever :-)

https://clever.com/

Sounds like a fairly large effort just to get revenge. You certainly are unlikely to find someone like this before a trial.

Did you watch the Sopranos? Tony kills an informant in the programme during a trip to New England with his daughter (looking at colleges). He randomly comes across the guy and recognises him from years earlier. Seems a lot more likely than hiring a bunch of hackers.

If mobsters were that competent, they wouldn't be mobsters in the first place.

"Organized crime?"

"Don't kid yourself, it's not that organized."

-Sneakers

> Since the government refuses to provide a fake credit history, witnesses also struggle to secure products and services when companies demand financial information.

Uh, if an adversary has large scale access to credit history (how hard is that to obtain?), couldn't they mine the data for their target and find them?

I suspect it's a blanked credit history.

Also they don't really need a credit history if they're given housing/car to start, and cash for secured accounts.

Credit history affects you in many non-credit ways.

I moved to North America, which means I had "no credit rating" which is the same as the worst possible.

It was annoying for a couple of things

- Had to put down a $1000 deposit to get a $1000 credit card

- Had to put down a $400 deposit to get a cheap cell phone

That's it.

What else were you thinking it impacts?

Insurance rates, home ownership (you are only provided an apartment under WITSEC), jobs often pull credit histories for background checks...

> Insurance rates

I never encountered that - if they were checking my credit, they never told me, and my rates were no different than friends with good credit. Is it legal for them to do that?

>home ownership

Obviously I wouldn't qualify for a mortgage right away, but that goes without saying when you have the worst credit rating possible.

>jobs often pull credit histories for background checks

Really? They can do that? Wow. If they did that to me, it apparently didn't hurt my chances, I've always been offered jobs I've applied for.

Really? They can do that? Wow. If they did that to me, it apparently didn't hurt my chances, I've always been offered jobs I've applied for.

You usually have to sign something when you apply giving them permission, so if you didn't do that then it probably didn't happen. Though in any case I doubt "no credit history" would be a bad sign for an employment offer; they're likely only looking for specifically negative events.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act requires anyone who pulls credit history from you to get your permission first.

>I doubt "no credit history" would be a bad sign

I was told multiple times at the bank it was equivalent to the worst possible credit rating.

For some types of credit, it could be. I had trouble getting a credit card with no credit history too. But potential employers aren't looking at it for that, they're just looking for specific negative things.

It depends on what they are looking for if poor credit score would be the same as no credit history.

If someone wants to extend you credit (this includes cell phone and cable service) no credit score would be the same as poor credit score.

Employers who do a background check are not looking to extend credit to you. They are usually looking to both verify your identity (did you lie to them on your resume?) and looking for negative stuff in your credit history. In that case having no credit history probably won't be a problem.

Local and national laws dictate what employers are allowed to take into consideration when doing a background check. The credit reporting services themselves are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act.

Almost every job I've ever had included some type of background check. For each I had to sign off for a third party to do the check. It totally depends on the company, and the industry and probably the geographical location.

You have to give an employer permission for a credit check. Companies outsource that to a third party. You'll have to sign off on it or you won't get the job. Company specific, obviously. A background check done by a third party for employment purposes will include credit history. If you didn't sign off on a background check they didn't pull your credit history.

That being said, they don't actually do the background check until after you've accepted the job. They say "this offer of employment is contingent on passing a background check."

I hear they may be doing away with this in some places.

RE: Insurance. Take it from Esurance.

https://www.esurance.com/info/car/myth-your-credit-score-doe...

>Many U.S. car insurance companies use credit-based insurance scores to help determine risk. (Unless you live in Massachusetts, Hawaii, or California, where the practice has been banned.) And studies have shown that there's good reason to use credit-based scoring in developing rates.

>In 2003, The University of Texas (PDF) conducted an analysis based on 175,647 policies. They found that those with lower credit scores tended to incur more car insurance losses and higher claims payout, and thus posed greater risk to auto insurers.

>The Federal Trade Commission (PDF) also undertook an independent study to understand the relationship between credit history and risk. Like The University of Texas, they found that credit-based insurance scores are effective predictors of risk.

You aren't ever going to get an apartment in my neighborhood without a credit history. Once again, you'll have to give permission for a landlord to run a credit check but your other alternative is not renting the place. Around here all the landlords have hard credit score thresholds. Though they probably would accept someone without a credit history if they had very high income.

> Though they probably would accept someone without a credit history if they had very high income.

This is variable around here. My business was turned down from a 3 year lease because of a minimal Dun & Bradstreet crossection and a short history of being in business... despite the fact we were earning 7 months of lease costs in revenue per 28 days... and we offered to pay the first year of the least in full, in cash. In a seller's market, landlords invent ridiculous reasons to not rent you stuff - especially in commercial space.

Oh yes, I don't disagree at all and that has been my experience. It depends so much on the local market. I was just throwing that out there as a possibility. Every landlord is different.

In my neighborhood you can't get an apartment without a credit history and high(ish) credit score. Landlords around here (even those who only have one property to rent) have a set limit for income and credit score. It's really insane. At least that's was the deal last time I looked for an apartment. The ads would say "at least X credit score and at least X income. NO EXCEPTIONS!" I seriously feel bad for those people struggling to find a roof over their head just because they don't have a credit history.

Were you ever able to rent a place for your business?

Yeah we found a place eventually. Had to put down insane deposits up front which is just ridiculous. We'll renegotiate after the 18 month trial period when we go to sign a 5 year deal. Gotta love commercial space.

Landlords often pull a credit report before renting apartments also. Mostly they're looking to filter out people who stiffed a previous landlord (which can show up as an account in collections), but a blank history may or may not satisfy them. The prevalence of this varies by area and type of landlord; corporate-owned complexes are more likely to routinely pull credit reports, while individuals renting out houses/apartments are less likely to.

> Uh, if an adversary has large scale access to credit history (how hard is that to obtain?), couldn't they mine the data for their target and find them?

How? There are millions of Americans without a credit history.

Fascinating. Is the property (cars, houses, etc.) of those put in WITSEC escheated?

I would imagine that the relocated family's durable assets would be seized by the government and sold, with the proceeds going through a sort of legal laundering and being made available to them post-relocation.

Hope what I see in Hollywood movies is not true;

A funny thing is I think >50% of them end up in Port Roberts, WA. It's an exclave of the US and relies on transiting Canadian border security, which generally prohibits felons from entering Canada, for communication with the rest of the US. As a result, most of the potential hitters from the mob, who are convicted felons, are less likely to be able to pass through, and they're also less likely to be able to easily bring weapons (although it's not that hard -- it's more that you'll get a bit of protection against casual interaction.)

WITSEC as well as international intelligence ops are suffering badly from searchable Internet histories, as well as biometrics at borders.

Point Roberts? "Point Roberts also has a small airport and a large marina for air and water access; these two facilities allow direct access to the rest of Washington state without the need to enter Canada." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Roberts,_Washington#Tran... I suppose it might be harder for hitmen to stay low-profile when entering by boat or plane instead of car, but I'd think it's not really going to stop them. It's neat to learn about the place, anyway.

Have you ever been to Point Roberts?

There's a big marina with lots of traffic.

It's a very small community so you'd stick out. Many retirees. Lots of dual citizens. The US/Canada border isn't really as secure as you think mostly because it's not possible to seal such a long border. A big city is probably an easier place to keep a low profile.

I don't think there's a big advantage compared to any other random place. As long as your new identity is solid you're probably safe. If someone wants to get you at any cost and they know where you are this probably won't stop them.

Anyways, it is a neat place and you can often see killer whales from the beach.

> The US/Canada border isn't really as secure as you think

I accidentally crossed it when out for a run one day. Only realized it much later.

Also: Last time I was there they didn't have a sheriff anymore, so the only visible law presence was the border guards.

The numbers don't add up.

Wiki says "As of 2013, 8,500 witnesses and 9,900 family members have been protected by the U.S. Marshals Service since 1971." The population of Port Roberts is 1,314.

50 people, not 50%, sorry. Still statistically a large fraction of the population.

http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/point-roberts-washi...

I've been there, but accident, when visiting Canada.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com