Why Does the DEA Still Have On-Demand Access to Trillions of Phone Records? | Hacker News Reader

Why Does the DEA Still Have On-Demand Access to Trillions of Phone Records?

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77 pointsrntn21 comments

The telcos need law enforcement on their side for some reason beyond money. Maybe worth digging on that. It'd be easy for the corporate officers to be worried about their personal safety over time if they refused.

I believe it's more of the threat.

Give us access, or we start paying attention to all that shady shit you do.

Less malicious than that, a Telco isn't going to spend legal time/money/firepower on someone else.

I thought about that. What shady stuff though? Can't just be polluting or bribing politicians, can it?

Usually debatable accounting practices, shafting customers on a breath-taking scale (see Wells Fargo), but also pollution. Bribes were legalized by the CU ruling that literally legalized bribery of politicians, so no worries there.

No one wants the popo snooping, because if they try hard enough, they will find things.

It's simpler than that. The government wants access to the records, and they give telcos two options: The easy way or the hard way.

Don't understand this, why would telcos fight against LE to provide access? Seems like the path of least resistance for them to go along with government requests, rather than something more nefarious.

Sibling post imagines an explicit threat to telcos, but there is very little threat on the other side, ie there is no incentive to stand up for their users privacy for these large bureaucratic / dysfunctional orgs, so why would they?

Huh? These requests are legal. They are complying with the law.

It's because the lowest-quality people imaginable work for the DEA (or other agencies like the ATF).

Just look around and you can see with your own eyes just how ineffective they really are, and that's with all of these obvious violations of rights to make their job much easier.

These idiots can't even keep drugs out of federal prisons.

Yeah, it's hard for me an outside to understand how drugs get into Fed Penitentiaries, other than corruption, but there must be more than simple corruption/bribery going on.

There isn't, too much money to be made by the guards in facilitating those transactions.

> too much money to be made by the guards

And a low give-a-shit factor outside.

Because once the government gets anything they will never give it up.

For targeted advertising to potential customers that might become crack dealers, of course. And the "ads" are more like ultimatums based on the dirt they've collected.

Why?... because laws only apply to the little people.

That's a fact.

Trump is a perfect example. Everyone posting here would have been shot had they caused a judge and their clerk to receive 100s of literal threats. Trump? Nothing. Like literally zero consequences. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nuthin.

I don't think Trump has anything to do with this... besides, that's kind of a bold statement regardless of your political persuasion, and not appropriate for HN.

Name one other defendant that caused a judge to receive 100s of threats and suffered no consequence. None!

That's the law literally only applying to the little people. My feelings on Trump are moot.

Fines as well. They’re basically “illegal for the non rich”.

“Nov. 29, 3:58 pm, 3:59 pm, 4:00pm, 4:01pm, 4:02pm: Targeted the wife of New York Judge Arthur Engoron — who is presiding over his civil fraud trail — in five separate posts for allegedly criticizing the Trump family and other Republicans on social media. Engoron's wife has denied making the posts, saying she doesn't have an X account.”

While everyone on this forum would be thrown under a jail, this is somehow not an example of how laws only apply to the little people.

To anyone getting into politics, this ain't that. The statement would be true whether he was a politician or not.

Source: the 80s, the 90s, the 00s, the 10s..........

I’m sure it helps their spam call filter.

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