U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-rt-us-dea-sod-20130805,0,5453047.story <comment><USER2> Secrecy in law enforcement is contagious precisely because it makes things so much easier. Kafka's "Trial" was a nightmare for the accused, but think how convenient it is for the authorities to not publicize charges or sentencing and to do everything on their most expedient schedule. As soon as it was decided that accusations of "terrorism" could be treated this way, the seed was sown. The programs and procedures developed by the "anti-terrorist" agencies will be readily used and copied by any other branches of law enforcement that have the ability to do so; this case is a prime example. So, if you thought Orwell was scary, say hello to Kafka now.

<comment><USER3> Secrecy in law enforcement is problematic, but the secrecy here is less pervasive than you imply. The crimes people are being charged with here are public. The trials are public. Critically, the evidence is all public, and the chain of custody of all evidence in these cases appears to be public as well.

Instead, what's alleged here is that the DEA is provided with enough information from intercepts to "always be in the right place at the right time".

This kind of evidence --- legit evidence traceable to illegit sources --- would be excluded if it involved torture, but apparently the jurisprudence hasn't caught up to its use in unlawful surveillance.

<comment><USER2> There's something a bit unsettling about the future when you discover that drug offenders have lately been tracked down and charged by the same means used for terrorists. But let's talk about the present. Would you find the scenario below possible in this context and, if so, somewhat worrying:

1\. There's nothing that special about drug crimes. It's reasonable to suspect other enforcement agencies are plugged into the NSA databases as well.

2\. Let's say that, through complete surveillance of his communications, the Anti-X agency discovers that John Smith has probably committed crime X. However, there is no other way to obtain evidence on the matter.

3\. As many people in this country, John Smith also happens to be a drug offender. Anti-X arranges for the DEA to be at precisely the right spot and time where the offense occurs.

4\. John Smith is now in jail for interrogation, and there's a search warrant for his home to (also) look for the evidence that Anti-X was missing before.

<comment><USER4> I can see in principle why this isn't really justice. But in the example you gave, I have a hard time siding with John Smith.

Anti-X was able to indict him because they found evidence by using another agency - this seems intuitive and useful because they could not have ordinarily found it. If he genuinely committed the crime, they're not obstructing justice or even his privacy here, they're just being creative.

Strictly speaking, I don't really mind that agencies in the United States can do that, because it opens avenues to evidence they would not otherwise have. What I _would_ mind is if law enforcement decided they could find admissible evidence by deliberately retrieving and opportunistically analyzing _inadmissible evidence_ as a springboard.

I understand that those two can seem really similar, but I honestly believe the latter case is a much more serious violation - it just seems like a much more slippery slope to me.

<comment><USER5> >I have a hard time siding with John Smith.

In principle, I don't care about John Smith[1] and I wouldn't advocate solely for the lawbreaker's sake. I'm advocating for innocent people whose rights are violated. Now, if this scheme were directed against a different class of criminal like theiving bankers or corrupt policemen; I'd feel better about the result, but not much. Along those lines, it is offensive to imagine that our supposed inalienable rights are discarded for something as pedestrian as drug offenses when it is clearly possible for some violent crimes to be stopped[2]. Note that I am not an advocate for that. But IMO it is an added insult that we're here living a version of Orwell's nightmare, having just begun to suffer its abuses, but because of the priorities of gov't don't receive the benefit of pervasive gov't protection.

On the ZOMG! slippery-slope angle, imagine just how abusive and corrupt an individual or small group of gov't agents can be when they are allowed to conceal so much of an investigation. One person, or a small group can completely frame an individual for a crime with relatively little opportunity for the accused to defend themselves.

[1] Personally, I am an advocate from drug legalization, but that's a separate issue.

[2] James Bamford alludes to the notion that NSA folk have had to observe some pretty terrible things in the course of duty. I don't envy them for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is _exactly_ the nightmare scenario we were fearing - and lo and behold, it has already happened: using mass spying data of the NSA to launch fishing expeditions against Americans, and find them guilty of crimes.

You could say "yeah but that data can't be used in Court!". But they can very _trivially_ skirt around that. They don't have to use _that data_. They just need to use some of that data to show a judge "probable cause" \- and BAM: now they have a warrant to _legally_ get access to anyone's data, and _that data_ they can use.

But in practice such process by the authorities makes the "limit" of a warrant essentially useless. The warrant just becomes an extra beaurocratic step that they have to take, but doesn't represent a limit on who they can investigate and how anymore.

<comment><USER7> _Wiretap tips forwarded by the SOD usually come from foreign governments, U.S. intelligence agencies or court-authorized domestic phone recordings. Because warrantless eavesdropping on Americans is illegal, tips from intelligence agencies are generally not forwarded to the SOD until a caller 's citizenship can be verified, according to one senior law enforcement official and one former U.S. military intelligence analyst._

Sounds like a pretty big limitation to me.

<comment><USER8> The operative word being "generally". Political limitations are worthless. If they have the capability, they will abuse it. We already know they don't care about the constitution and that they have secret interpretations of laws.

<comment><USER7> Ignorance of the law and imagination can get you pretty far.

Lets be frank here, Political limitations are the only thing stopping government agencies from shooting Laser Microphones half-a-mile away listening to your entire house. (4th Amendment, Illegal Search) You have no idea of the abuses that can be possible with law enforcement equipment, and are probably just scared of a little bit of the possibilities or powers afforded to them.

Keep your wits about you, this can get much much worse before it may get better. And hyperbole now will only harm your argument in the long run.

Reality is, intelligence agencies are under DoD. They aren't supposed to be investigating Americans, period. If they manage to nab information about American People (which includes legal immigrants btw), they are not allowed to forward it to law enforcement.

We know that anything pulled out of the NSA system is recorded and checked by the FISA courts, to ensure that Americans were not part of the targets. (Edward Snowden admitted it himself, although he wanted more than just 5% random checks on this log).

<comment><USER8> "Lets be frank here, Political limitations are the only thing stopping government agencies from shooting Laser Microphones half-a-mile away listening to your entire house. (4th Amendment, Illegal Search)"

Why go through all the trouble when they can turn our cellphones into listening devices?

[http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB1000142412788732399700...](http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB10001424127887323997004578641993388259674-lMyQjAxMTAzMDAwMTEwNDEyWj.html)

"We know that anything pulled out of the NSA system is recorded and checked by the FISA courts, to ensure that Americans were not part of the targets."

That is absolute bullshit! Have you not payed attention to the latest leaks on XKeyscore?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> _After an arrest was made, agents then pretended that their investigation began with the traffic stop, not with the SOD tip, the former agent said. The training document reviewed by Reuters refers to this process as "parallel construction."_

Jesus fucking Christ. They were lying to prosecutors to get charges pressed against people.

<comment><USER10> They weren't necessarily lying, -just omitting the cause prior to the traffic violation. If the traffic violation as primary cause was never challenged, they wouldn't technically be taking a position on the origin often. They'd simply state the facts: "Vehicle X was driving southbound on I-94 and failed to utilize a turn signal while switching lanes. I pulled car over and noticed x,y,z..."

As a police officer friend of mine told me many years ago "If I want to pull you over, there is nothing you can do to stop me. All I have to do is follow you for one mile and you're going to violate _some_ portion of the traffic code."

I'm not defending this _at all_ , as I think it is outrageous and that the link to harvested NSA data is _beyond the pale_ . I'm just pointing out that this is, as the article mentioned, de rigueur, and when a technically legal starting point is provided, the defense likely almost never challenges that, thus eliminating the need for the prosecution to take a formal stance on the origin. Hopefully this begins to change.

<comment><USER11> _They weren 't necessarily lying, -just omitting the cause prior to the traffic violation._

You seriously need to read this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree)

 _Fruit of the poisonous tree is a legal metaphor in the United States used to describe evidence that is obtained illegally.[1] The logic of the terminology is that if the source of the evidence or evidence itself (the "tree") is tainted, then anything gained from it (the "fruit") is tainted as well...Such evidence is not generally admissible in court._

You cannot conceal the source of evidence that leads you to other evidence.

<comment><USER3> I think (and hope) you're right that this is a straightforward application of the poisonous tree doctrine, but you should be aware that the doctrine is not quite a clean-cut as you make it out to be. One big exception to it is "inevitable disclosure". If a traffic stop is otherwise lawful, and a normal police officer acting in the lawful confines of their authority would have otherwise discovered e.g. the drug stash in the car (for instance, because it was in plain site in the back seat), the Poisonous Tree doctrine probably doesn't exclude the evidence.

That's the tricky thing about the Reuters DEA revelation. Some drug offenders probably are cavalier about displaying evidence in the cars because the likelihood of their being stopped is low. Here, domestic surveillance is allowing the police to drastically increase the odds that they'll make a fortuitous traffic stop.

What would _not_ work, in my understanding of the story, is for an intelligence intercept to establish the legal basis for stopping and searching a car.

<comment><USER12> I completely understand the technical distinction, however I find the argument hypertechnical and completely violating the spirit of the law.

Honestly seems like the whole point of SOD is to get around the poison fruit guideline.

<comment><USER3> I agree, it really seems like they're trying to come as close to the line as they can without obviously crossing it, and I think it's clear they did cross it.

Also, I don't see any virtue to secrecy in this case; unlike organized Al Qaeda terrorism prevention or foreign hostile adversaries or counterproliferation, the tactics we're using in the "war on drugs" are a public policy matter that benefit from public discussion.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13>
      First they came for the communists,
      and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

      Then they came for the trade unionists,
      and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

      Then they came for the Jews,
      and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

      Then they came for me,
      and there was no one left to speak for me.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%2E%2E%2E](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came%2E%2E%2E)

<comment><USER14> We rightly vilify the Third Reich, but the lesson of history is not that the Nazis were intrinsically evil; it's that any culture has the capacity to normalize and systematize its own unique brand of evil, via a thousand baby steps.

Just because America is not and never will be Nazi Germany, that's no reason to accept or ignore the American flavor of fascism that has been quietly brewing for decades.

<comment><USER15> I highly recommend this documentary on the Gestopo:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtgB4qiiWBI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtgB4qiiWBI)

The first thing the Nazis started doing when they got power was set up a secret investigative unit. Where they started creating detailed records of all of their enemy targets (starting w/ the communists and the competing political party). This intelligence was then used by the SS/SA to harass, round up and assassinate anyone who was a threat to their power.

The intelligence agencies were the foundation of Nazi fascism. The signs of power abuses were present in these agencies _way_ before the Gestopo became publicly infamous for targeting Jews.

<comment><USER14> I've very much come to hate Godwin's Law. There are important lessons, perhaps the most important, to draw from that dark time of history, and we won't see them if we insist that the comparisons are only apt if every little thing is exactly the same, or as 100% evil as the Nazis. There should have been far more attention paid to the specific comparisons of the Patriot Act to pre- conditions of Nazi Germany, rather than getting distracted by "BUSH=HITLER LOL".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just a couple of days ago somebody on HN speculated this was happening, and I dismissed it as paranoia. Surely nobody is going to risk revealing the existence of a universal surveillance program over a few drug convictions, right? Twenty-eight of you agreed with me. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6134821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6134821)

I give up. Apparently no speculation is out of bounds any more. If someone says it's all due to Nazi reptoids, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER17> I've had similar experiences about many things I used to think were paranoid becoming provable fact. However the other day the news about the google search for back packs and pressure cookers I thought was completely false and it was.

What I've realized is that the things I thought were paranoid and came true are things that I thought were paranoid because I had "trust" in various organizations not to abuse power, not because the actions seemed out right implausible.

With the backpacks and pressure cookers story, I was skeptical not because I trusted the fbi, but because it seemed implausible given the way the fbi typically acts and strongly against their interests.

So my updated rule is that 'trust' is no longer a valid reason to rule something out as paranoid. This is an ethos that the security world has long held as obvious, that many technical people formerly not particularly interested in security are waking up to.

<comment><USER18> "There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty."

-John Adams

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a far bigger story than PRISM or XKEYSCORE. Both described databases compiled through known processes (FAA orders and fiber taps) and used for terrorism and foreign intelligence investigations -- not domestic criminal investigations.

The Reuters report today shows significant abuse of intelligence intercepts that should make all of us angry.

The NSA has been allowed to assemble its vast intelligence-gathering apparatus on the theory that terrorists and foreign spies do not have Fourth Amendment rights, and the executive's power to conduct surveillance is at its height when non-Americans are the focus. Now we've learned that the Feds have engaged in a bait and switch maneuver: databases are collected on the "terror spies" pretext, and then they're used for domestic criminal prosecutions. This is very dangerous.

It also shows that the Supreme Court justices who blessed the NSA's FAA intercepts in February 2013 were fare too optimistic. They said if the Feds used NSA intercepts to bring domestic criminal prosecutions, they "would be required to make a disclosure": [http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-1025_ihdj.pdf](http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/12pdf/11-1025_ihdj.pdf)

FYI here's my article from last month on how the DEA's Special Operations Division, cited in today's Reuters piece, does e-mail wiretaps: [http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57593538-38/how- the-u.s-fo...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57593538-38/how- the-u.s-forces-net-firms-to-cooperate-on-surveillance/)

</comment><comment><USER20> Greenwald now discussing it live here: [http://www.democracynow.org/](http://www.democracynow.org/)

Edit 1: Has ended, will post a link when in archive.

Edit 2: The interview starts at 18:00 and a direct link to the MP4 file is [http://dncdn.dvlabs.com/ipod/dn2013-0805.mp4](http://dncdn.dvlabs.com/ipod/dn2013-0805.mp4)

Edit 3: Starting 43:15 pertains to DEA SOD

</comment><comment><USER8> After hearing all of this stuff, I feel like the television show The Wire was either way ahead of its time or had really great law enforcement consultants. I'm leaning toward the latter.

<comment><USER21> Before David Simon created The Wire he was a reporter on the Baltimore Sun, covering the crime desk. He somehow managed to convince the Baltimore PD to embed him in the homicide department for a year. Ed Burns (who co-wrote a lot of the series) used to work as a Baltimore PD detective, and the technical advisor for the first two seasons was a Baltimore police commander.

A _lot_ of the plots on The Wire are based on actual cases and occurrences. In some cases quite loosely, in others not so much. It's a depressingly realistic show.

<comment><USER22> [http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/10-real-...](http://www.criminaljusticedegreesguide.com/features/10-real- people-that-inspired-characters-on-the-wire.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A government that hides its actions is a government that is overstepping its bounds and needs to be slapped around a bit. I think we're decades behind in the slapping around department.

Make everyone a criminal and spy on everyone so you can control them and scared them to death. What a wonderful way to run the "land of the free"

I bet most people thought the spying was for terrorists.

<comment><USER24> I've said it before and I'll say it again.

The USA is a tyranny, there is nothing you can do about these things.

<comment><USER25> One of the principal mechanisms used in the USA to maintain its system of oligarchy / tyranny is distraction of the population via "culture war" issues and identity politics.

As long as people vote based on who they'd rather have a beer with, or based on issues like homosexuality and religion, they will _not_ vote based on issues of social justice, economic well being, or against the politics of corruption.

The culture war and identity politics are a classic divide and conquer technique. It's used because it works.

<comment><USER26> I've long thought this, but never read someone say it so starkly. My heart dropped with every sentence.

Any suggested reading?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> In light of the "Three Felonies a day" phenomenon, and given the sweeping nature of the surveillance, it seems likely that the number of cases that are prosecuted represents only a small fraction of the number of potential cases that could possibly be taken to trial.

This gives the criminal justice system considerable latitude to select and prioritise certain cases over others.

How are these decisions made?

Can we be sure that political considerations and/or racial / sexual / gender biases, (conscious or unconscious) do not play a role in the decision making process?

<comment><USER28> > How are these decisions made?

When it's convenient for the career of the person with their finger on the button.

> Can we be sure that political considerations and/or racial / sexual / gender > biases, (conscious or unconscious) do not play a role in the decision making > process?

Quite the opposite, we can be sure that they _do_ play a role. When you get to pick and choose your targets, it's a foregone conclusion that the targets you pick will be selected because of some criteria beyond the fact that they are merely in violation of the law.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> _" It is one thing to create special rules for national security," Gertner said. "Ordinary crime is entirely different. It sounds like they are phonying up investigations."_

This implicit double standard plays a role in allowing this kind of thing to happen. I wonder when we'll start reëvaluating it?

</comment><comment><USER30> Imagine if you were listening in to communications on US citizens as part of an NSA program and you came across what appeared to be the distinct planning of a murder - one that had nothing to do with National Security now or in the future. What do you do? This is part of the interesting range of unexpected consequences when you stretch boundaries.

<comment><USER31> Before the leak -- nothing probably. It would have revealed the existence of the program.

Now -- sure! They could just come knocking to the door. This is dark side of the leaks in way. If they know we know, they they can expand the use of the tool. (Or rather I should say this is the dark side of apathy to the information in the leaks, now they now public doesn't care enough).

<comment><USER26> The apathy is the scary part. I fear it would take a _mass_ roundup of people before the "we need this because of X" people might start questioning it.

OTOH, it may be mental (illness?) for people to blindly follow authority.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > _" As a practical matter, law enforcement agents said they usually don't > worry that SOD's involvement will be exposed in court. That's because most > drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial and therefore never > request to see the evidence against them. If cases did go to trial, current > and former agents said, charges were sometimes dropped to avoid the risk of > exposing SOD involvement."_

This is interesting, as it's basically an admission that Aaron Swartz-style prosecutorial bullying is not limited to just computer-related cases.

<comment><USER33> >This is interesting, as it's basically an admission that Aaron Swartz-style prosecutorial bullying is not limited to just computer-related cases.

I guess I always took it for granted that prosecutorial bullying is ever- present. It's interesting to come face-to-face with the reality that it's not part of everybody's worldview that the State is 'out to get you'. (no sarcasm)

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Here's hoping that everyone who was convicted via this method gets their sentences overturned, because that's about the only way this will stop.

<comment><USER35> I think it is less nefarious than that - it feels more like the problems that arise from fixing bugs in code. We've all encountered this - you fix one bug and it breaks 3 other things, because of unexpected/unintended consequences. Something else was relying on the broken code to work right. Systems thinking is just plain hard...

So how do we do unit tests for laws?

<comment><USER36> Lawyers are like _that guy_ in that complexity favors them and gives them job security. Simplicity and clarity is not a virtue in law.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> So suppose this is true:

 _A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said._

How do you square that with the claim that the NSA is tracking only metadata? I'd say you need the phone call contents to know where to stop a particular truck.

<comment><USER38> Because SOD has more investigative inputs than just the NSA, and also because they are not required to track only metadata for foreigners.

More mundane (and perhaps more likely) is that the source data for that kind of tip comes from wiretaps from existing open investigations. You might not get probable cause for a search based on the wiretap data alone, so SOD gets the local cops to alert on the car instead and "start" the follow-up investigation.

<comment><USER39> yes could be an informant or a undercover cop - back in ww2 the ultra decrypts where disguised as coming from other sources.

You not going to tell some random cop this is from bob our inside man on the crew in case the cop is corrupt and sells out your DEA agent

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Something tells me we will soon learn that the judicial branch purposely creates loopholes for the executive branch to exploit.

<comment><USER41> I will literally cry myself to sleep that evening if such a thing comes to pass :(

<comment><USER28> I'd start hydrating now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The next question: How come with all this, the cartels continue to exist?

<comment><USER8> Because the U.S. government secretly loves to profit off of both the direct selling/transportation/etc of drugs and the prison industrial complex.

I recommend you read the following for more details and proof:

The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity- Global/...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Politics-Heroin-Complicity- Global/dp/1556524838/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Politics_of_Heroin_in_South...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Politics_of_Heroin_in_Southeast_Asia)

Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond

[http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History- Sixties/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Acid-Dreams-Complete-History- Sixties/dp/0802130623/)

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

[http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1595586431](http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/1595586431)

<comment><USER43> Thanks for that list.

It feels like in a world where people were generally interested in solving the issues with the drug trade the DEA wouldn't need to exist. It's something that should be solvable.

People _will_ take recreational drugs, so obviously the solution is not to create an organisation to fight that. There has to be a safe source for these drugs that plays nicely with society and the political system. Do you have any good recommendations for information regarding places where this has been tried in earnest?

<comment><USER8> You're welcome. I agree. Since the dawn of time humans have wanted to alter their consciousness.

Glenn Greenwald has a great paper about drug decriminalization in Portugal. Lots of shocking graphs and statistics. The digital version is legally available online for free.

[http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug- decriminal...](http://www.cato.org/publications/white-paper/drug- decriminalization-portugal-lessons-creating-fair-successful-drug-policies)

[http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwa...](http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/greenwald_whitepaper.pdf)

Unfortunately that's about the only resource I can think of when it comes to drug legalization/decriminalization in an actual real world environment. I'm hoping to see some papers in the next couple years about marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado.

This is only semi-related, but Vangard has a really fascinating documentary on prescription drug abuse/doctor shopping in Florida you might find interesting. It's called the Oxycontin Express. Basically people go down to Florida, get a whole bunch of prescriptions for Oxycontin and then resell the pills in Kentucky and other States at a ridiculous profit. Here's a link to an online copy of it.

[http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/oxycontin- express/](http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/oxycontin-express/)

<comment><USER13> _" Unfortunately that's about the only resource I can think of when it comes to drug legalization/decriminalization in an actual real world environment."_

Marijuana is effectively legal in the Netherlands. (Technically illegal, but "tolerated")

<comment><USER44> Due to a loophole, for a year you could legally buy psilocybin mushrooms in the UK, in "head shops," on market stalls, online, anywhere, with zero regulation. It was fine. The government eventually banned them out of embarrassment. The public information posters announcing the upcoming ban had a rainbow coloured fractal background. It was pretty funny.

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4692359.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4692359.stm)

[http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4691899.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4691899.stm)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Ties directly into this:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154302](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6154302)

</comment><comment><USER46> Mind blowing lack of sense of right and wrong from govt agents who think laundering the trail of their investigation is the right thing to do. We really are living in post-constitutional USA.

</comment><comment><USER38> Wow. Hadn't heard of this 'parallel construction' stuff before, and will have to reserve judgment for now... but telling agents and investigators that they can't so much as mention the provenance of the info to the prosecutors or the court is rather beyond the pale.

</comment><comment><USER47> _A former federal agent in the northeastern United States who received such tips from SOD described the process. "You'd be told only, 'Be at a certain truck stop at a certain time and look for a certain vehicle.' And so we'd alert the state police to find an excuse to stop that vehicle, and then have a drug dog search it," the agent said._

I live near a section of a federal highway that is well known to be used for transporting drugs from New York to Vermont. For the past few years, I've been struck by the number of arrests that always seemed to start with a traffic stop. Given the daily traffic volume of 60-25K vehicles per day, I had always wondered how the relatively few officers covering a wide area could be so effective.

</comment><comment><USER48> The next agency I expect to hear about ... the IRS starts using this kind of data.

<comment><USER49> I'd bet tomorrow's lunch they already have.

<comment><USER50> Not long before the NSA story broke in June I recall a few quickly forgotten stories about the IRS reading people's emails without warrants, and monitoring transactions and social media to find people cheating on their taxes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Why did both the headline _and_ the source article on this get changed? It was initially a link to Yahoo News and is now the Chicago Tribune.

<comment><USER51> Original headline mentioned the specific allegation that the DEA was using this warrantless information to springboard investigations into previously unsuspected persons.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Let's not get too carried away. Secrecy in law enforcement can be a valuable tool: it allows things like protection and development of informants, lawful surveillance, undercover operations, etc.

Prosecutors have never been required to turn over ALL evidence -- only exculpatory evidence (and that does not include evidence that might be useful in jury nullification, only evidence that would tend to prove the accused innocent of the charges). Withholding evidence of guilt from the defence is common: it is done to protect sources and ongoing investigations or even to shorten a trial. If you have more than enough to convict, why trot everything out?

The described "parallel" investigation is another common technique. If you have a source of evidence you need to protect, then you develop different evidence and instead use that to secure the conviction. Provided the evidence used is real and is sufficient to prove guilt, no laws or moral codes have been transgressed.

Law enforcement and prosecutors use inadmissible evidence all the time to pursue an investigation. The point of an investigation is to secure sufficient admissible evidence to successfully convict (prove guilt of) the perpetrator. But the rules don't say you can't use all the information at your disposal -- only that some of it might not be useful for you at trial. (Full disclosure: there are, and should be, rules governing what law enforcement and other state and federal agencies can do in collecting evidence. But disclosure of all information, evidence, and techniques to the defendant is definitely not one of them.)

An interesting corollary is the so-called "fruit of the poisonous tree" problem. If a critical piece of evidence is deemed inadmissible, it might take with it a bunch of other evidence that was generated based upon it. Courts frequently permit the prosecution to re-introduce some of the evidence if it can be shown that it could have (not "was", "could have") been developed without access to the inadmissible piece. This is precisely the parallel development narrative described, and it is a very common tool.

I agree that this particular system seems well beyond the pale, but lets not pretend that suddenly getting rid of secrecy in law enforcement and removing prosecutorial discretion is a no-brainer solution. Lets also not pretend that this isn't a clear extension of standard practice (albeit a pretty major and troubling extension we might want to trim back a bit).

</comment><comment><USER53> There needs to be a phrase for that moment when the wholesale discarding of the law is so accepted within a government agency that it ends up embedded in a tutorial Powerpoint slide, which eventually gets leaked to the press and (hopefully) implodes the whole practice.

"PPTerrorism"? "PowerPointillism?"

Or maybe a wonderful German composite word.

</comment><comment><USER54> [http://www.archives.gov](http://www.archives.gov)

lynx -dump [http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_tra...](http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/bill_of_rights_transcript.html) |sed '/The right of the people to be secure/,/be seized./s/ \\[ Redacted \\]/'

</comment><comment><USER55> Off-topic, but still interesting in context of social networks as a leakage vector:

 _Since its inception, the SOD 's mandate has expanded to include narco- terrorism, organized crime and gangs. A DEA spokesman declined to comment on the unit's annual budget. A recent _LinkedIn_ posting on the personal page of a senior SOD official estimated it to be $125 million._

</comment><comment><USER56> I was excited to see this story being broken by Reuters instead of the Guardian. The US press have been sleeping on the job, but this article gives me hope. I'm sure it doesn't hurt that the Guardian have been openly bragging about the amount of traffic they've gotten from covering the NSA scandal.

</comment><comment><USER57> I've thought about writing a program that would randomly send search queries to Google, Facebook, etc for specific keywords like pressure cooker, drug, bomb, etc. Just overwhelm them with traffic.

<comment><USER58> There have been some half-serious discussions about this elsewhere. The idea is to start flooding the web with _encrypted_ traffic, which is supposedly enough of a red flag in and of itself for the NSA to consider it worth storing. The back-of-the-napkin math predicts that if you do enough of this, they'll be unable to store all of it.

Or they'll just open a new datacenter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> The data-mining aspect could be troubling depending on the details, but the parallel construction isn't. They're not planting the drugs on the suspects when they stop stop them. But the hysteria here is thick so one can't even begin to have a reasonable discourse in this comment thread. The paranoid one- sidedness of the discussion is mind boggling.

Look at these downvotes for disagreements. There's nothing I've said that warrants the downvotes.

<comment><USER60> _There 's nothing I've said that warrants the downvotes._

Maybe you're getting downvoted because you're complaining about downvotes and not actually contributing anything to the dicussion?

<comment><USER59> I did contribute something, the point that drugs are not being planted on people. The parallel construction wouldn't work if the suspects were not actually committing crimes. Nobody wants to talk about it I guess however, too busy getting their fix on today's outrage porn.

<comment><USER13> _" The parallel construction wouldn't work if the suspects were not actually committing crimes."_

See "Three Felonies a Day"[1]

Also, note the following quote from the original article:

 _" most drug-trafficking defendants plead guilty before trial"_

In fact, something like 90% or more of people accused of crimes in the US never get a trial, because they plead guilty. They plead guilty because prosecutors pile on so many charges that the defendants are afraid to risk life in jail if they happen to lose (in a judicial system that's usually stacked against them). Defending a case in Federal court is also incredibly expensive and traumatic. See the Aaron Swartz case for good examples of all of the above.

[1] - [http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target- Innocent/dp/1594035229)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> What a shock!</comment>


The Earth Will Remember Humans for the Mess We Left Behind - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-08-28/calling-this-era-the-anthropocene-is-a-confession-of-human-harm <comment><USER2> George Carlin on "saving the planet": [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7W33HRc1A6c)</comment>


CPU time for trivial datastore roundtrip - Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/msg/7957354552707512 <comment><AUTHOR> See the whole thread for details. This is the CPU time you get billed for, the requests themselves are quite fast.</comment>


Passing the Microsoft Interview  - <AUTHOR> http://blogginman.blogspot.com/2010/03/passing-microsoft-interview.html <comment><USER2> I agree with these tips generally except for this one, _Tip #4: Don't mention a naive algorithm to fill time_.

When confronted with a novel and tough problem it makes perfect sense to start out from the most obvious solution and think your way through its problems. Good algorithms don't come from divine inspiration, they come from familiarity with the problem domain, which includes understanding of the naive solutions.

By all means, start out with the first algorithm that pops into your head, just don't linger on it.

<comment><USER3> I'm with you in disagreeing with #4, but I generally disagree with most of his points, simply on the grounds that his article might be better titled, "Passing the Microsoft Interview when a Jerk Like Me is on the Interview Loop."

That's a little harsh, so let me elaborate. It's a matter of explicit policy at MS, and at least implicit policy everywhere, that interviewers are looking for candidates that will be successful at the company. This unpacks to "candidates who will do excellent work with minimal supervision and stay and grow in their careers with the company." If we grant this (I think uncontroversial) goal of the interview process, then we can measure each of his rules by how well they serve that goal, and ask generally if there are any rules at all that will ultimately serve it.

While "Know Your Stuff" is trivial and uncontroversial (and therefore not worth mentioning), the remainder of his points 2-7 amount to telling you how to say your shibboleths. I mean, if you just knew the answer to the problem (for example, if you had seen it before), could you just present the solution and be done? Or do you have to "Describe the Algorithm?"

The smoking gun, however, is point 7:

 _This is just good psychology. Make the interviewer feel important by spending a few minutes at the end asking about the interviewer's team and work._

He's telling you to suck up. To him. Personally. Sometimes you just get a freebie, as in this case. So many of the author's implicit fantasies leak through his prose that we can easily dismiss him. To name two:

First, he believes that there can be "7 tips" for passing an effective interview process, not one that is mere kabuki. An effective interview process screens out the stylistic theater. This is an ultimately unsolvable problem, unfortunately. Candidates always simply rehearse their shibboleths.

Second, the author thinks that he's arrived and that he's reduced to practice the means of telling who else has arrived. Implicitly, this means that he views how he's judged himself ready is the approved way to judge others. The circularity of that belief is the playground of Dunning & Kreuger.

If he wants either to find truly valuable candidates or to be able to assess himself critically in a manner that will prod him to grow, he needs to relinquish his rule-based and ultimately smug beliefs about how to evaluate himself and others.

<comment><USER4> "If you describe an idea or belief as a shibboleth, you mean that it is thought important by a group of people but may be old-fashioned or wrong."

"Candidates always simply rehearse their shibboleths."

Can you explain what you meant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Recruiting is a hard problem in itself. It seems like these methods are no longer a good solution to the problem. These interviewing methods at MS and other similar companies are more like a tradition, a process among so many other bureaucratic steps to get things done or drag things to completion.

They haven't evolved, and they are easily hackable. Spend some time researching on the internet and you will run into all questions you will be asked. The Same set of questions, reverse string at Microsoft, design parking lot at amazon, binary search tree problem at Google etc no originality from the interviewers, not all of course.

Some guy wrote a set of reference questions to ask in phone interviews 10 years back when he was at Amazon and even today people ask those exact 5 questions for phone interviews. It is so sick, the last time a guy asked me these, I felt sorry for myself, I called him a tool and I am now in process of bootstrapping.

<comment><USER6> "Some guy" in this case is Steve Yegge. The document in question is [http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone- scre...](http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/five-essential-phone-screen- questions) It is not a list of questions, it is a list of topics to cover in an interview. Having done over 300 interviews over the last two years, for all levels of experience, I have to say I mostly agree with Steve. His observations at the end are spot on.

<comment><USER7> Just because he's done a lot of interviews doesn't mean he has actually learned anything or become good at conducting them. I'd argue the opposite. He's become entrenched in methods that do nothing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A lot of people would disagree with #4. There's nothing wrong with saying the naive algorithm and then refining it to the correct algorithm. I got the O(nlog n) algorithm for the longest increasing subsequence problem, but it wasn't the first algorithm I came up with. Also, asking about capitalization in the reversed words problem seems stupid to me -- I'm not really sure why the case would change, and if the interviewer has random addenda to the problem they should state them up front.

FYI, I just completed the Microsoft internship interview.

<comment><USER7> The unwitting arrogance displayed by this guy and many others charged with interviewing in today's climate is often astounding. Here, jump through this random hoop -- and you'd better be ready for this hoop, too! I'm sure it makes them feel quite good about themselves for being fortunate enough to be on the right side of the interview table.

I look forward to the next boom, when they will be begging smart people to take jobs. They probably won't get them.

<comment><USER9> I think in many cases "random hoops" are useful in interviews - they show that you can modify your solution to accomodate unforeseen problems, and make sure you know the full scope of the problem (by asking questions about it) before jumping in with a solution.

<comment><USER7> If the actual job involved solving random problems in an instant, then these tests would make sense. As they are, they're really just statements of power: I have a job, you want a job, so I can make you jump through this hoop. I am great! Look at my little fiefdom.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I just accepted a full time offer there and I think being passionate and excited about the team I was interviewing with seemed more important than the technical questions. Of course you can't bomb them but all else equal it is good to show you _want_ to work on that team. For me this was genuine and I think that came through.

And yea, it is a long day.

</comment><comment><USER11> I think #1 is a lot more complex than just basic clarifying questions. The key is to understand the _context_. Where is this code going to be running? Who is going to call it? In what scenarios will it be called? Things like that.

I remember getting a question on reversing a linked list or something basic like that and being told that it was the innermost core loop of some spaceship's propulsion system. A lot different than some code which people rarely call where you could optimize differently. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'll jump on the "ignore tip #4" wagon (as long as you mention that it's naïve, and immediately move on), but I've got beef with some of the rest too:

2: More important than understanding what the problem is asking, is understanding _why_ it's being asked. Do they want to see you come up with an interesting algorithm, or is it a simple matter of "does this young fellow know what a pointer is?" Figure this out, and you'll be able to cut your work in half, because you can avoid doing things the interviewer was never interested in seeing anyway. You can in most cases just ask straight out "you just want to see if I can flip bits correctly, don't you?" and get an honest answer.

5: Checking boundary conditions when coding on a whiteboard is bogus, unless that's the point of the problem, and not algorithmic complexity. If you're writing code with durability or atomicity constraints, or it's obviously a bit twiddling mess that was only asked to see if you can check for them, edge cases matter. If you're writing something complex at a high level, you should be able to get away with sweeping the null checks under the rug.

6: Some people (hi) can often keep track of a sizable number of invariants as they check over a bit of code, and this means they can run mental tests very quickly, that are often more thorough than running a few examples. It's reasonable and good to be able to do this (you'll be a great debugger), and a good interviewer won't discount you for it. In my case, I would do this mental check, prove to myself that it was right, then just say "ok, I'm convinced it's right, would you like me to sketch a proof, or run some examples?" If they want examples, you can use what you learned doing that quick check to generate examples that you think will hit the corner cases. You should really be prepared to prove it aloud, and then check some examples anyway, in case you forgot about some type of input (punctuation in the article's problem is a good example)

7: You should ask about the interviewer, partially to make the interviewer feel good getting to talk about herself, but mostly to find out as much as you can about her, and feel your way around what sorts of things you might be able to get away with in the interview, and what things she'll be hunting for. For this reason, you should ask these sorts of small talk-y questions before the bulk of the interview if possible, and use what you learn immediately to mentally prepare for the question, and to guess what sorts of questions you should ask, and what questions she'll be asking about your solution.

(Passed their intern interview recently too, high five Locke)</comment>


Show HN: Upbeat, HN for music - Node + Redis + Angular + Soundcloud - <AUTHOR> https://upbeatapp.com

<comment><USER2> I really like this. I had this concept in my head for a while now. It's a great execution.

What I never could wrap my head around is how to monetize it without using ads all over.

I see you are using "Buy on amazon". Is this giving you a share of the profit?

Anyway, great job!

<comment><USER3> Yeah, we have Amazon affiliate links set up so we get a little share of the purchases. There's ad/sponsorship possibilities and a couple other ones we're exploring.

Thanks for checking it out!

<comment><USER4> This is really cool. It is the first Show HN I've immediately added to my favorites and sent over to non-technical friends. Also I'm glad you found a good way to monetize without adspamming the crap out of the sidebars. To echo above, really cool execution.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I see this working very well if it is possible to create sub-upbeats, especially for groups of friends. A big general one is hard in the context of music. Good interface btw.

<comment><USER3> Thats actually something we'd like to do soon, appreciate the input!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One UI request however. Put the music controls above the comments section immediately below the album art or above the album art. The bottom right is like a ghost town when you're looking for a control (at least for me, took me a bit to notice them down there).

</comment><comment><USER6> First of all great job guys. The website looks really good even better than HN. One thing I dislike is the scroll bar in the middle. It makes navigation a bit cumbersome in my opinion.

I see you are using redis! It would be great if you could share some details about your usage like how much memory your app uses and what are your costs associated with it.

<comment><USER3> Thanks for the feedback on the scrollbar.

Our redis instance is pretty tiny (~10mb) and we haven't had any issues thus far. The performance has been outstanding and we have only used a small fraction of our capacity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I like that this will allow me to try to promote my music in a way that doesn't feel so spammy. If people don't like it, it won't get any visibility, and I won't have to feel like I'm bothering people.

A bit of feedback: people's submissions should default with 1 upvote(ala Reddit).

<comment><USER3> Absolutely, we hope this grows into a platform that artists can promote their songs in a unique way not available anywhere else.

Regarding the auto upvote, we agree and will implement that soon. Thanks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you don't allow people to submit their own tracks then it isn't really HN for music. You should make that clear on the submit form.

(Posted my own track under the artist name, just got deleted. Guess I should have lied.)

EDIT: the site is very nice though.

<comment><USER3> Thanks! You can submit any song from Soundcloud at the moment (they can be yours if you'd like), and we'll be adding more sources soon. We'll work on making the submit form more clear, good feedback.

<comment><USER8> Ahhh sorry. It appears that after submission I was on the New page, with my track at the top. When I clicked away I was back on the Hot page. I thought it was a different algorithm where there's only one page, and new stuff starts at the top and drops away very quickly unless it is upvoted, something you sometimes see on other sites. So I assumed it was deleted. Silly me.

So, in conclusion, you need to make the Hot/New link stand out more.

EDIT: I'll tell you what happened: the Hot/New page doesn't touch the history stack, so when I hit refresh, expecting to be in the same place, my track had vanished.

Ironically of course the refresh was probably pointless, everything's all websockets these days.

<comment><USER3> Gotcha, I see what happened. We'll work on making hot/new pages more easily accessible

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Apparently I love the site, because I already left a comment and submitted a song :)

Here's my submission, if anyone wants to hear it: [https://www.upbeatapp.com/#/?track=662](https://www.upbeatapp.com/#/?track=662)

<comment><USER3> great song, upvoted! Thanks for signing up and checking it out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Wow, very cool, I will use it.

How do you deal with copyright and author rights?

<comment><USER3> We stream all of the songs via Soundcloud API, so its not really any different than a blog posting a song their site. If an artist wants a song removed though, we do have a channel set up to request removal.

<comment><USER11> Your are still liable for copyright infrigement, wherever your music comes from.

       - so its not really any different than a blog posting a song their site.

And that's totally illegal since the owner usually doesnt give you the permission to do so. Did Grant Lee Buffalo label or Placebo label gave you the permission to broadcast their music ? Your host can shut down your website directly without warning following a DMCA takedown notice,if it is a US business.

<comment><USER12> Do you even know what SoundCloud is? The music is uploaded by the artists themselves so this is perfectly legal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> How is this any better than say /r/listentothis? Not being snarky, but genuinely curious how you are setting yourself apart existing services.

<comment><USER14> After 1 minute play: It's a lot simpler, even with RES, better filtering and automatically plays the next hottest song.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I can't submit a song, just keeps on saying 'submitting'. I am using Chrome (30.0.1599.69).

</comment><comment><USER16> Have you considered doing the same thing as a spotify app - this'd be a great spotify app!

</comment><comment><USER17> Great Job on this. I really like the light upbeat (pun intended) feel of the design.

</comment><comment><USER18> Shame that it doesn't support Firefox though...

<comment><USER19> It works fine for me in Firefox 24.

<comment><USER20> FF 24 too, and It complained here about the lack of MP3 support.

I can't test the sound playback because of a broken jack plug in the headphones socket... A pentalobe screwdriver is on its way.

<comment><AUTHOR> We are using feature detection for audio/mpeg playback. Soundcloud only streams as mpeg.

Firefox only supports audio/mpeg when a third-party decoder is available.

[https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/HTML/Supported_medi...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/HTML/Supported_media_formats)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> clark-kent I love this, I'm jealous great execution.

<comment><USER3> ha thanks for the kind words.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The site is beautiful. I like it :)

<comment><USER3> Thanks Bender80, appreciate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> i dig it

<comment><USER3> Thanks cioc! Let us know if you have any feedback.</comment></comment>


Ride-hailing apps may help to curb drunk driving - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2017/04/daily-chart-0 <comment><USER2> Based on personal experiences this isn't surprising. When I was in college in a small town in the late 00's, many friends and acquaintances would drive across town after heavy drinking. 10-15 minutes, straight roads, little traffic. Other than not going out, or not getting home, you didn't have many options. It was a hour long walk or a $20-40 cab ride, if you could get one.

I was recently back in town for a wedding and our uber to the hotel from the venue (about the same distance) was $9.

Once came to town (now on the east coast) I instantly noticed many friends who used to drive would take an uber. It's cheap, it's easy to call one from a crowded/loud place, you know how much it will cost, they don't use cash, they know where you are, and you don't have to give directions. For someone intoxicated (or anyone really), these are game changers.

It's the difference between "who's going to drive?" and "who's calling an uber?"

Company politics aside, the accessibility of ride-sharing services introduces numerous real safety benefits on top of the obvious convenience.

<comment><USER3> It has always amazed me how casually people drink and drive in some countries; the US especially springs to mind.

Over here, drinking and driving is an extremely shameful and embarrassing thing to do. I would say it's on par with hitting a child. You just don't do it, not to save 20 bucks, or to save you from walking an hour.

<comment><USER4> It isn't that, the cab rides are never just $20, and often there are no cabs at all. The USA just has crappy non car transportation options. And it isn't just an hour walk in many places, but a few hours walk on dark streets with no side walks. When I was living in the Deep South, I sometimes had to take people home 20+ miles out in the middle of nowhere.

<comment><USER5> > 20+ miles out in the middle of nowhere

That's the reason there are no cabs and I don't blame cab drivers. They don't get paid to sit around 40 minutes to find a passenger. I'm surprised that finding an uber in one of those places is not difficult either.

Outside of the US, a lot of the population is very condensed (well the US is to some degree) making cabs and public transportation much more efficient/effective IMO.

<comment><USER6> I remember reading a post from an Uber driver in a small town. Basically, instead of idling, he'd just use his house as a waiting area. So instead of just waiting around, he'd be at home, doing other stuff until he got an rider. Then he'd get in his car and drive them where they needed to be.

<comment><USER5> If he lived next to the bars or downtown that would probably be reasonable, but I can't imagine he would bring in too much money (as opposed to living in a large metropolitan area).

<comment><USER7> It really depends on how close the rural area is to a population center.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's file this one under "duh"

It's not ride-hailing apps themselves. Has nothing to do with the fact that it's someone else's car or that you use an app instead of a phone number to order it.

It's the fact that you can get home now for $10 only waiting 5 minutes from the time you decided you want to leave.... compared to paying $60 and waiting an hour.

<comment><USER9> I disagree, Uber for all its obvious faults has a top notch UX, I don't need to find cash, I barely need to break off conversation with my friend let alone speak to a person on the phone who will inevitably be confused about where I am. All that stuff drives adoption and retention.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Or conversely, the taxi medallion system is likely responsible for 24-35% of drunk driving incidents...

<comment><USER11> In Vancouver,

If going out downtown, it's a 80$ cab ride each way atleast.

Transit would take atleast an hour but good luck taking it back at 2am when service is very limited.

I could drive after drinking and spend 30-40 minutes.

There is no ride sharing allowed here yet.

I usually don't go out if I don't have a designated driver as it's just not affordable or takes too long.

Many friends, and I admit myself when younger, would have just drove home drunk as it was cheapest quickest option

We have actually found it cheaper to drive downtown, find a cheap decent hotel on priceline and drive back home after a good sleep.

I can't wait for ride sharing here, I use it everywhere else when traveling.

Ride sharing makes it affordable convenient and quick... Can definately see how it attributes to less drunk drivers.

<comment><USER12> Without great public transportation, it seems rather unlikely for suburban folks to enjoy a lifestyle where you can drink downtown and safely get back home at a decent rate. Ridesharing might be cheaper for now, but I'm not sure what it will be like when the prices truly represent the market value; currently, most ridesharing companies seem to be operating at loss. The ultimate solution might come when autonomous driving becomes possible, I really can't see it another way.

BTW even with public transportation, if you're drunk enough to think it unsafe to drive, you're probably gonna want to use the restroom more often.

I've gone over this issue a LOT, and right now I'm planning to move to the city center and just take the hit of higher rent for now. Luckily, I am single so this is a lot more convenient than if you have a family with kids and stuff.

<comment><USER13> I wish the US and Canada would relax zoning restrictions. I've spent the last decade or so in Japan and the UK and it's just so much better. Admittedly, when you are young and going out clubbing then you want access to the big city. But for quieter/older people, just having access to a decent restaurant or pub within walking distance of your house is amazing. These days my wife and I might go out to the big city maybe once a month or two, but at that frequency booking a hotel is feasible. Every other time we go out we stay in our neighbourhood because there are really great places to go -- even though I live in a tiny town. In Canada, you really _do_ need to live downtown if you want any kind of social life outside of your house.

<comment><USER14> Cities could easily dezone. Most areas have only had zoning for 60 to 80 years, prior to that there was just fire & building code constraining you. What was added by zoning was height restrictions, parking minimums, building type eg. single family detached, and lot/building size minimums.

The value that zoning provides is to segregate and disenfranchise the bulk of the populace, while spreading them out during the Cold War so as to make the US more resilient towards bombings supposedly. This is the same culture that thought sidewalks were bad.

<comment><USER15> I dunno- Houston is notorious for its lack of zoning, yet it still grew the same sprawling manner. The fact is most of our cities did most of their growth after WWII. A baby boom, affordable automobiles, the interstate highway system, advertising, and FHA subsidies made mass suburban developments like Levittown profitable and desirable.

<comment> nommm-nommm Houston pretty much has zoning they just don't call it zoning.

[https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what- youv...](https://urbanedge.blogs.rice.edu/2015/09/08/forget-what-youve-heard- houston-really-does-have-zoning-sort-of/)

>Matthew Festa [is] a land use professor in Houston...

>For all that's been made of Houston's infamous lack of zoning, Festa said it increasingly seems that reputation isn't deserved or even accurate.

>"We do have a lot of land-use regulations," Festa said. "We still have a lot of stuff that looks and smells like zoning."

>To be more precise, Houston doesn't exactly have official zoning. But it has what Festa calls "de facto zoning," which closely resembles the real thing. "We've got a lot of regulations that in other cities would be in the zoning code," Festa said. "When we use it here, we just don't use the 'z' word."

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The cited CUNY study: [http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...](http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=gc_econ_wp)

<comment> andrew-lucker Wow, this was treated pretty well wrt stats, almost like a clinical trial. The article makes it sound like just an anecdote.

<comment><USER16> Applied microeconomics is full of these sort of studies. It thrives on finding "natural experiments" to exploit and identify/measure an effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Another study from July 2016 said that Uber doesn't save many drunk driving accidents although the study referenced in the Economist only focused on NYC, whereas the study from 2016 was focused on multiple metropolitan areas.

[1]: [http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/07/22/aje.k...](http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/07/22/aje.kww062)

<comment><USER18> I think he's overfitting. Also the way he controls for Lyft seems poor, I think, because if both services led to a reduction them controlling for Lyft would reduce Uber's contribution it seems (that is while Uber's effect might be small as well as Lyfts, together they would be larger). He really should be asking "Do ride sharing services reduce drunk driving fatalities?" Not Uber specific.

Also his variable for Uber is only a one or zero. It should instead be the number of drivers in the county.

They quotes a study done on only California that shows Uber reduces fatalities, but doesn't ask himself if maybe county by county is important. Instead he groups everything together, even some countries that have very few.

Here's the sentence that should indicate something is wrong with his analysis, he finds Uber increases fatalities (a noticably but not significant):

> This model shows that on average, the presence of Uber was associated with a > 2.0% (95% confidence interval: 0.98, 1.06) increase in traffic fatalities > among all drivers; however, this association was not statistically > significant at conventional levels.

I think he definitely needs to break out the results data into county by county results to see if maybe there is a different result for maybe more populous counties.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Hmm, the study [0] credits over all reduction of drunk driving accidents to Uber. If ride sharing is the source of reduction, shouldn't ride sharing in general be credited? Maybe Uber was the only ride-share available during the study though since it's data from 1989-2013.

"A recent increase in the ease and availability of alternative rides for intoxicated passengers partially explains the steep decrease in alcohol- related collisions in New York City since 2011.I examine the specific case of Uber's car service launch in New York Cityin May 2011, a unique example of a sudden increase in cab availability for intoxicated passengers.7This study draws on a dataset of all New York State alcohol-related collisions maintained by the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles from 1989 through 2013. My inference is based on the variation in Uber access across New York State counties over time and the careful choice of New York State counties that provide an appropriate control group for New York City's drunk- driving behavior"

Edit:

Fair enough, looks like lyft only came to NYC around 2014[1]. But does anyone know if the ride share prices in NYC from 2011 [2] to now has significantly changed? I vaguely remember a lot of people using it initially because of dirt cheap prices during the first few month of introduction but I don't trust my memory over facts if someone has some.

\</comment><comment>-----

[0][http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10...](http://academicworks.cuny.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1012&context=gc_econ_wp)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyft#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyft#History)

[2] [https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/i-just-rode-in-an-uber- car...](https://techcrunch.com/2011/04/06/i-just-rode-in-an-uber-car-in-new- york-city-and-you-can-too/)

<comment><USER20> It's not just about dirt cheap. You know that you're not going to get screwed by an uber driver, even if you're drunk. Can't say the same about cab drivers, who've definitely tried to pull things when they see drunk people. Not to mention the ones that'll just pass you by over and over, or won't come to your location at a certain time, or just not answer the phone. Cabs in general have been horrible.

<comment><USER21> I've been taken advantage of by Uber drivers while drunk.

That said, when I woke up the next day^Wmonth and saw the charges and the loop-de-loops they took to get me home, I complained and Uber refunded me the whole fare, which I didn't even ask for. If this was a cab and even with a credit card charge (forget about cash) I would have just written it off.

<comment><USER22> Well if you didn't end up paying for it then they didn't really take advantage. They just attempted to and were stopped by the feedback loop ride sharing systems offer.

<comment><USER23> Yes, that's the parent poster's point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I've wondered if cell phones have led to fewer altercations on subways as people spend more time focused on them, giving them less reason or chance to argue and fight with others.

<comment><USER25> That's a funny hypothesis to think about. I wish there was a good data set we could analyze on this matter. I'd really like to be able to answer the question: "Have smartphones reduced human interaction. Especially with strangers."

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Proving another benefit of subsidized public transportation. In Uber's case, low-cost rides subsidized by its investors.

<comment><USER27> Would you mind showing me their financials in the US market, so we can see the extent of the subsidization across different cities? I would like to see the numbers that you derived your claim from in regards to Uber's operations in the US.

<comment><USER26> Uber's history of subsidies is well-known:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/07/02/ubers- newe...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenhuet/2014/07/02/ubers-newest- tactic-pay-drivers-more-than-they-earn/#732da1591011) (2014)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2016/08/23...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2016/08/23/ubers-controversial-strategy-to-finally-defeat- lyft/?utm_term=.f58ce2c0d2d9) (2016)

[https://qz.com/940605/is-the-era-of-cheap-uber-rides- over/](https://qz.com/940605/is-the-era-of-cheap-uber-rides-over/) (2017)

But I don't have a breakdown per-market.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Another bright light on the horizon: Self driving cars. I'm hugely optimistic that within the next 100 years, we could very possibly see deaths from drunk driving shrink to a small fraction of it's current value. It's a great thing when profit driven businesses also have positive side effects for everyone.

<comment><USER29> I'm curious when self-driving cars become common place how the law will react to it. It's my assumption that the law will still require a driver to be sober in the event that manual control is needed, though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in the first place.

<comment><USER30> > though I suppose if the car is driving itself perfectly fine police would > have no reasonable grounds to pull anyone over and discover they're drunk in > the first place.

I can't speak for America, but here (Australia) I'd guess the vast majority of drunk driving tickets are from booze busses. I can't even remember the last time I saw somebody pulled over and breathalysed.

<comment><USER31> Could you elaborate? What's a booze bus? In the US, It's a pretty common occurrence to see someone pulled over and breathalyzed if they're driving erratically.

<comment><USER32> A booze bus is a random breath test - the police have labelled busses that they park on the road. I believe if you blow over the limit then you get on the bus and are tested again in 30 minutes.

They look like this: [http://www.ranted.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/109890-b...](http://www.ranted.com.au/wp- content/uploads/2012/09/109890-booze-bus.jpg)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> The study was originally published in January. This article is being published in April.

I subscribe to the Economist and I enjoy it, but I am cynical about why this is being published now, amidst significant negative publicity for Uber.

<comment><USER34> I would not be surprised if Uber hired a company to astroturf their branding after the Lyft boycotts and constant negative hits to their image.

In fact, this is exactly something I see Travis doing to "fix" the problem.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Perhaps that should be phrased "the availability of drivers using a ride sharing platform has helped reduce drunk driving accidents."

If Uber doesn't accept drivers as employees and isn't responsible for their actions, it shouldn't be credited with their collective contributions to a safer society.

<comment><USER36> That's a strangely bitter way of looking at things. Ride sharing companies, including Uber, have brought tremendous benefits to society, and drunk driving prevention is probably at the top of the list. Uber has made the largest difference of all these companies because it has been the most aggressive in disrupting rent-seekers like taxi companies.

The drivers and the general willingness of people to embrace the gig economy should also be credited, but not to the discredit of the companies that created the ride-sharing platforms that made it all possible.

<comment><USER37> Perhaps, but don't call it "sharing," because sharing is reciprocal. If it were actually sharing, you would be driving for Uber as much as the people who chauffeur you around. Call them what they are: unlicensed taxis.

Also, "the general willingness of people to embrace the gig economy" is just another way of saying "many people are desperate enough to do sub-minimum-wage piecework."

<comment><USER38> > because sharing is reciprocal.

This didn't sound right so I looked it up[0]

No mention of it being reciprocal - which makes sense for almost every use of "sharing" I can think of

When I share my sandwich I'm not receiving any other sandwich from anybody else (perhaps if I was I'd share more often)

Anyway, its not easy to defend Uber and I don't want to be labeled that way - since I've boycotted the service more than once, but some of the arguments in this thread on this page seem really petty

[0] [http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sharing](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/sharing)

<comment><USER39> It's only ride "sharing" if the driver is already driving that way. You're going along with them.

If someone shares their sandwich they are eating it too. If someone makes a sandwich to give to you that's not sharing.

<comment><USER40> If you come visit my house, I'm likely to offer you a drink when you arrive.

If you take me up on a water, I'm sharing my water with you, _whether or not I drink a water myself at that moment_.

(I'm perfectly happy to call Uber, Lyft, etc "unlicensed taxis" as I do think that's _more_ accurate than "ride sharing"; I just don't agree that it's _completely_ inaccurate to call them ride shares.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> If society really cared about drunk driving, there would be a free bus outside of every bar at bar close. We can do it for kids going to school, we can do it for adults going home.

But they don't care, they just want the money and power (unconstitutional DUI check points) involved in the DUI process.

<comment><USER42> Bus riding has a social stigma outside of the very largest cities. Also, people in the US love complaining about taxes, and you know what costs money? Buses.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I observe this is true with my 21 year old son who is in college. After a few drinks and dancing downtown, they all grab an Uber back home, they don't even consider driving. Now it is a small town, but you can still pick up an Uber at 2 am for a 5 dollar ride home. Awesome!

</comment><comment><USER44> At least in London people are saying these apps are adding to road traffic and congestion, so the extra pollution (by other traffic being stuck also) might be harming health and causing early deaths to balance out any lives saved by stopping drunk drivers.

<comment><USER45> But that's because in London, Uber competes against public transport. That's not the case for many US cities (New York is an exception).

Even though as a London resident, I've never heard that argument. Most Ubers are either new petrol or even hybrid. Black cabs are (mostly old) diesel.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Uber's PR team would be rejoicing right now! It is great that technological advances have both positive and negative effects, and some times, the positive effects saves a ton of lives.

<comment><USER47> Ummm... I'm sure Uber's PR team had absolutely nothing to do with this article ;)

<comment><USER46> Exactly, they are getting free publicity, it isn't bad anytime.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> How is this even up for speculation? Why is there a need to quantify this with a study? _Of course_ it curbs drunk driving. When you have better options, they're used.

<comment><USER49>
      How is this even up for speculation?
      Why is there a need to quantify this with a study?

Legislation and governance is influenced by statistics. If a City Hall meeting is discussing legislating against Uber, and a taxi commission presents a paper demonstrating that Uber will cost $X in economic loss to the commission, it behooves Uber to present a competing analysis: showing $Y savings relating to drunk driving (or whatever else they can show).

On the face of it, it seems sad that everything - even the cost of human life - is quantified.

But it is a rational argument when making trade-offs:

"This new pill is better than aspirin." "OK, let's use that instead of aspirin."

Vs

"This new pill is 0.1% better than aspirin." "How much does it cost?" "Ten times the price of aspirin." "OK, so the effect is 0.1% better, but we can only treat a tenth of the number of patients? Better stick with aspirin."

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> * Without Uber or Lyft, Austin Experiences Skyrocketing DUI Rates - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world || [https://fee.org/articles/without-uber-or-lyft-austin-experie...](https://fee.org/articles/without-uber-or-lyft-austin-experiences-skyrocketing-dui-rates/)

> Before Uber came to town in 2014, Austin Police Department's data showed > that the city had an average of 525 drunk driving arrests per month. When > these numbers were revisited a year after ridesharing came to Austin, drunk > driving arrests had dropped by five percent. This trend continued the > following year when the number of drunk driving arrests dropped by an > additional 12 percent, bringing the average number of arrests to about 438 > per month.

> In May of 2016, the same month Uber and Lyft made the decision to leave > Austin, the monthly rate of drunk driving incidents was down to an average > of 358. However, within the first few months of Uber and Lyft's absence, the > number of DUI arrests increased by 7.5 percent from the previous year. In > the month of July alone, the city had 476 drunk driving arrests.

</comment><comment><USER51> ...but what about cars left on the parking lot by the drunk ppl? a lot of ppl might choose to drink&drive because they have to go back & get their cars again...

In South Korea they have 'substitute driver service' that drives customer's car (obviously, with customer in it) back to the customer's home.

I'm sure this can be done logistically (have a large bus carry around drivers, etc.)

<comment><USER52> > ...but what about cars left on the parking lot by the drunk ppl?

1\. This may sound obvious but maybe don't drive yourself if you're not going to be able to drive back. Ask a friend to take you or plan to pay for both ways.

2\. Plan for the extra time the following day to pick your car up where you left it.

3\. Drive with someone who can drive the car (and you) back.

I'm surprised you think this is a difficult problem. People have been doing these things for decades.

<comment><USER53> In many cities like Los Angeles public transportation is either non-existant or extremely poor, the most common scenario is that someone goes to work and is invited to go have a drink with the office gang after hours. It's not realistic for them to drive an hour home in rush hour traffic and then take Uber back to meet everyone as they'll already be gone. Instead they go have a drink, start thinking, "Geez, I probably should get Uber but then I'm going to have to get Uber in the morning to get to work and then I have to get my car from the parking lot at the bar. I guess I'm not really that drunk I can probably make it home okay."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> A separate discussion that I'd like to have is – why do people drink so much, to the point of drunkenness? Why is this so common? Has this always been the case? Will this change?

<comment><USER55> > why do people drink so much, to the point of drunkenness?

Many reasons. To the point of darkness because it's a thin line between a light buzz and over-the-top-cannot-even-say-my-name

> Why is this so common?

human nature. Not only human, actually, monkeys drunk on fermented fruit, etc [1]

> Has this always been the case?

Yes

> Will this change?

No.

[1] [http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2011/...](http://www.australiangeographic.com.au/topics/wildlife/2011/10/animals- getting-high-10-common-drunks/)

<comment><USER53> Elephants too. They've been known to raid villages and steal booze. [1]

[1] [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229334/Fifty- drunke...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2229334/Fifty-drunken- elephants-ransack-village-gulping-500-litres-alcohol.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> No question ride-hailing has a net plus impact on reducing drunk driving. Though, it only works for the most fortunate of us (1) who live in urban areas (2). Also, let's not forget that the most important driver to prevent drunk driving in the United States, is the severity (or extremism) of DUI laws. As a matter of fact, punishments for such infractions are so extreme that they achieve deterrence not by fear of punishment, but fear of unfair punishment.

<comment><USER53> See Fighting MADD [1]

Don't be put off by the site's domain. There are plenty of other articles that say the same exact thing. In fact, Wikipedia contains several links to articles critical of MADD's mission and fundraising [2]

[1] [http://www.drunkard.com/08_02_fighting_madd/](http://www.drunkard.com/08_02_fighting_madd/)

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mothers_Against_Drunk_Driving)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> To all those complaining about ride sharing systems: phhffft!

</comment><comment><USER57> I wonder if this conclusion could be further validated using other signals like drunk driving arrests or the same set of statistics in other cities.

<comment><USER58> Economists like to use natural experiments—when comparable populations are exposed to different conditions through policy or chance. It would be interesting to compare Austin (no Lyft/Uber) to a similar city in the vacuum between the locally-grown solutions coming in and U/L leaving. I'm not sure how robust the findings would be though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I discovered Lyft after a friend of mine got a DWI.

His DWI was enough to get him to turn himself around, so he started using Lyft every time he went out drinking (years later, he's still steadfast about not driving when he's drinking), and he told me about Lyft, so now I use it all the time instead of relying on public transit or asking my friends to give me rides.

</comment><comment><USER60> I'm a little late to the party, but I did a similar study on ridesharing's influence on DWI rates in Austin, TX before and after Uber and Lyft arrived and then exited the city, you can read it here: [http://rpubs.com/ianwells/247645](http://rpubs.com/ianwells/247645)

</comment><comment><USER61> So on the one hand technology allows for better taxi services resulting in fewer impaired-driving accidents, on the other hand, technology in the form or gadgets (entertainment systems, phones, GPS, etc., distract drivers as well as pedestrians resulting in more accidents on the not-under-the-influence side of things.

Still 24+% reduction is quite an nice result.

</comment><comment><USER62> Note that Uber was not the only taxi reform in NYC. A quote from the paper: "For my analysis, I use data from collisions that occurred from January 2007 through July 2013. This period includes Uber's entrance into the New York market in May 2011, allows for a substantial pre-intervention period, and omits two potentially confounding entrances in the New York City transportation market that could influence the alcohol-related collision rate. The first entrance occurred in August 2013 as New York City introduced a new form of taxi medallion to serve only the "outer boroughs" of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island, and northern Manhattan. These "boro" taxis were painted green rather than the typical yellow medallion taxis, and banned from picking up in lower Manhattan, where most street-hail yellow taxi rides originate."

Note also that Uber in NYC is operated by TLC-licensed drivers against whom it is very easy to file a complaint for dangerous driving, which is different from many other cities. I used NYC's lovely 311 app to file a complaint against just such a driver for shouting at me after he drove at me head-on in a 2-way bike lane. I expect he'll face a significant fine.

<comment><USER40> > I used NYC's lovely 311 app to file a complaint against just such a driver > for shouting at me after he drove at me head-on in a 2-way bike lane. I > expect he'll face a significant fine.

I'd wager against that outcome from a due process and practicality standpoint. If dropping a dime on someone using their ID number would result in a significant fine absent other evidence, there would be chaos.

<comment><USER62> The fines happen. The evidence is photographs and my testimony if the driver doesn't plead guilty.

One Twitter user documents his use of the process quite thoroughly: [https://twitter.com/D00RZ0NE](https://twitter.com/D00RZ0NE)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> I seem to recall a Freakonomics chapter or podcast episode that discussed drunk driving vs. walking home drunk, and concluded that walking home drunk was even more dangerous than driving home drunk. Either choice is much worse than ride-sharing or cabbing or public transit, obviously.

<comment><USER64> There's a huge caveat that's imperative to note:

It's safer to drive only for the driver, as the driver usually survives car accidents and is less likely to drunkenly wander into traffic or get mugged, for example. For others, it's much more dangerous if a drunk person drives (such a person will hit pedestrians, other cars, etc).

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> My instinct is that Uber fed this story to the Economist to try and counter their recently bad PR

<comment><USER45> My instinct is that this is wrong. Probably rather hard to bribe the economist.

<comment><USER66> Timely media coverage isn't necessarily the result of bribes.

The survey was done in January and is now being published in April. A savvy PR agent doing crisis management would be combing Uber's research archives looking for things they could spin into positive press releases.

The press is always hungry for content, and it's not too hard to write something that appeals to a particular publication - no bribes involved.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER67> ?! Does this even require stating, let alone an entire article? What am I missing?

When Uber launched in my city, that's the first thing I began using it for. Lack of other options meant that I either had to wrap up drinking sessions early or risk DUI.

<comment><USER45> It's important to have statistics instead of just opinions. Especially if you want to change future regulation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> This seems pretty obvious. Is this considered newsworthy in part because the recently popular media refrain has been "Uber is bad"?

So now articles that point out the good that ride-hailing apps do are considered interesting?

</comment><comment><USER69> Even 35% seems to low to me... I really thought/wish it was lower. Hopefully the reduction in bad driving practices start to reduce car insurance premiums as well.

</comment><comment><USER70> I don't know... this credits Uber, and Uber is bad.

<comment><USER71> Because things can only be bad or only be good right?

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> It's amusing seeing people try and spin this against Uber, wouldn't want to leave the bubble for to long.

</comment><comment><USER73> "Ride-hailing apps may increase alcohol-related health problems"

</comment><comment><USER74> So do trains and trams

</comment><comment><USER75> ...but not Uber CEO drunk arguing with drivers...lol

</comment><comment><USER76> Makes total sense, I certainly have seen it.

</comment><comment><USER53> Let me start off by saying that I don't approve of drunk driving. That said, the laws and how law enforcement treats drunk driving and how alcohol related accidents are reported tell a very distorted picture. After the MADD campaigns picked up sufficient steam and states began taking drunk driving more seriously, numbers dropped. But then they quit dropping. So many states lowered BAC limits from .10 to .08 in order to include more drivers in the impaired category even though there was no evidence to support it. With numbers stagnating again, you see another push for states to lower BAC levels to .05 even though there is zero evidence that this will lead to fewer accidents. All it does is create more criminals on the road which the police can then catch, fine, and profit from.

In the US, more people are arrested for drunk driving than for any other crime. Nearly 1% of all licensed drivers has received a DUI in the last 3 years.

As all of this was happening, the definition of what was alcohol related began to expand. Currently if any party in an accident is under the influence, even if they were not operating a vehicle, it's alcohol related. These inflated statistics then fuel calls for more oppressive crackdowns on drunk driving.

Again, I'm not advocating drunk driving but we have to focus on the right problems. Like, how do you keep the people who are the most dangerous off the road? While the police are out spending resources racking up arrests for people who had a couple of glasses of wine with their meal, a large percentage of accidents are caused by repeat offenders. Nationally, over 33% of people arrested for DUI get another DUI. And people with multiple DUIs are overrepresented in fatal car accidents (4.1x more likely).

Considering the fact that the most common BAC of someone who has been pulled over for suspicion of DUI is .16, continuously lowering the BAC threshold in order to snare more people in DUI convictions is not the answer. They're not the ones getting into accidents.

Believe me, if they changed the laws and made it a crime to serve more than two drinks to someone unless they could prove they had a ride home (other than them driving, of course), the alcohol companies would quickly come up with solutions.

Clearly the government's interests are not aligned with lowering drunk driving. Lowering drunk driving costs money (public transportation options, better city planning, etc). Arresting people for drunk driving generates revenue from fines. If they were successful in lowering drunk drivers on the road they would be decreasing their budgets.

Until you can align motives with profits, you'll never fix the problem. You'll just keep increasing the base of people who are considered criminals.

</comment><comment><USER77> What caused the drop in 2008? o_O

<comment><USER78> The financial crisis? You can see its effect in almost every graph.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> ya</comment>


Show HN: Bounce is the "physical cloud" for your daily items - <AUTHOR> http://www.getbounce.co <comment><USER2> How do I get stuff to and from my "Everywhere locker". And when and how can I retrieve it again?

<comment><AUTHOR> Initially we are using UberRush or Postmates API to use their drivers while we scale up the service.

They'll pick it up from you, store it in one of our "flash storage" facilities, and you request it back when you want.

Can be returned back anywhere (geography limitations initially).

<comment><USER2> Hmm. That does sound neat. When and where do you launch initially?

<comment><AUTHOR> Launching in NYC initially due to density. Sign up on the waitlist as future city launches will be based on where demand is. Freebies for our first waitlist users!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This ought to be expensive. But if it is expensive no one is gonna use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> In the long run, this will be cheaper than the cost of 2 Uber Pools (<$15 per Bounce). In the short term, we can keep prices between $15-30 within a "zone."

We have a plan to drive the cost down even further with a different model that we'll roll out eventually as well...</comment></comment>


Solar and wind now the cheapest power source says BloombergNEF - <AUTHOR> https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/2018/11/solar-and-wind-now-the-cheapest-power-source-says-bloombergnef.html <comment><AUTHOR> >Unsubsidised solar and onshore wind are now the cheapest source of new bulk power in all major economies except Japan thanks to falling technology costs.</comment>


Structuring Modern Objective-C - <AUTHOR> http://ashfurrow.com/blog/structuring-modern-objective-c

<comment><USER2> Enable modules and use them to import system frameworks:

       // #import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h>
       @import Cocoa;

Use literals and subscripting methods:

       NSNumber *yes = @YES;
       NSNumber *number = @42;
       NSArray *array = @[@"Hello", @"World"];
       NSDictionary *dictionary = @{ @"name" : NSUserName() };

Learn about "instancetype": [http://clang.llvm.org/docs/LanguageExtensions.html#objective...](http://clang.llvm.org/docs/LanguageExtensions.html#objective- c-features)

Always use NS_ENUM and NS_OPTIONS to declare enum types:

       typedef NS_ENUM(NSInteger, HNExample) {
          HNExampleDefault,
          HNExample1,
          HNExample2
       };

<comment><AUTHOR> Good tips, too! I tried to stay away from more stylistic things, but I do agree with you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Thank you Ash, I was looking for that for long time.

I'm happy that I found your blog with so many iOS resources. I'll read them all and I'll follow your activity a there.

</comment><comment><USER4> >Instead, you should be declaring them as properties, and then accessing them through message-passing or dot syntax.

Dot syntax _is_ message passing. This type of confusion is one of the reasons I really hate dot syntax.

<comment><AUTHOR> I know. I was referring to the message-passing syntax or dot syntax.</comment></comment>


Claims and Evidence - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/392d96708cc0

<comment><USER2> Got your point. I'm going to provide sufficient Es because I have to convince the users anyways. Give me an opportunity to prove with you first.</comment>