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AT&T Invents Surveillance Programming Language

Posted by Zonk on Tue Oct 30, 2007 09:45 AM
from the code-breathing-on-the-other-end-of-your-phone dept.
Security Communications Privacy
An anonymous reader writes "AT&T has long been associated with advances in the programming arts as well as communications. They've recently brought those disciplines together to create a powerful datamining language called Hancock. Hancock is a C variant developed to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes. 'The manual for the language includes a Hello World variant that shows you how to write a program that will parse logs of IP addresses and record them into permanent hashes. The program for parsing millions of records as they flow into permanent data farms sounds oddly close to the data mining the NSA performed after 9/11 to find targets for its warrantless spying on American citizens calls and emails."
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  • Hancock.. worst name ever. (Score:5, Funny)

    by EveryNickIsTaken (1054794) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @09:47AM (#21170687)
    What, was Palmdong taken?

    • Re:Hancock.. worst name ever. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ByOhTek (1181381) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @09:50AM (#21170725) Journal
      No, they thought Orwell would be too obvious.

    • Re:Hancock.. worst name ever. (Score:5, Funny)

      by djasbestos (1035410) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:00AM (#21170905)
      Eh, it looks close enough to C that it can, in the vein of C++ and C#, be referred to as C====>

    • John Hancock (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Speare (84249) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:23AM (#21171291) Homepage

      Jokes aside, is this related to John Hancock?

      John Hancock was an American Revolutionary, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He signed it as largely and boldly as possible, much larger than any of the other signatures on that document, so that the King of England would have NO trouble identifying him in the face of his (and his compatriots) clear act of treason. His name is now synonymous with autograph or signature, as in, "Can I have your John Hancock here, please?"

      If the AT&T technical staff called their data mining "language" Hancock, it may have been a poetic choice: AT&T is signaling their actions, and/or the actions of the government agents, are akin to treasonous. Yes, the charge of 'treason' is nearly moot in modern US law, but the fact remains that any sensible reading of the Constitution would not indicate any authority for what the government is doing with our communications.

      • Re:John Hancock (Score:4, Insightful)

        by IndustrialComplex (975015) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:54AM (#21171761)
        Actually, I would think that by calling it Hancock, they are referring to the fact that people monitored are supplying their own Hancock simply through their actions.

        In other words, there would be no doubt as to who was behind the words coming from the machines. An involuntary Hancock as it were.

  • Heard near Massachusetts... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by UncleTogie (1004853) * on Tuesday October 30 2007, @09:55AM (#21170815) Homepage Journal

    "Hey, what's that whirring sound?"

    "It's the founding father [wikipedia.org] this programming language is named after...spinning in his grave..."

    • So can we use him as power source? If we used it to power servers running datamining applications, we would have perpetuum mobile!
  • Monitoring communities of interest is no doubt something of interest there..

  • We are already working on:

    • Hancock++ - Because a single + was not enough
    • H# - .NET version of the language
    • GNU/Hancock - Returns the results as an open source document and publishes it to the freakin' world
    • GoogleHancock - Datamines Chinese citizens and returns the results to party headquarters and the People's 9mm Ammunition Billing System
    • HancockScript - Great for client side mining

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      pCock - Python variant
    • Don't forget JCock - the J2EE version being promoted by IBM and Sun. IBM has also announced a version of WebSphere optimized for JCock and middleware called CockSphere.

      Finally, the Mozilla Foundation has announced a datamining extension for it's popular Web browser called Firecock.

    • Don't forget:

      • hancocK - the KDE version
      • Data Mining Language - the Gnome version
      • Diptheria - Miguel's version of H#
      • HerbieHancock - automated music librarian that tags 99% of your music as "pop crap" and deletes it. Also detects audiophile owners and scrubs their drives (to give them "more danceable sound").
    • GoogleHancock

      Too long, people will have to abbreviate it GooCock or gCock.
    • GoogleHancock - Datamines Chinese citizens and returns the results to party headquarters and the People's 9mm Ammunition Billing System

      Actually, that is YahooHancock and MSHancock. GoogleHancock is the one that absolutely requires a warrent to see the data.

  • Ummm.... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Otter (3800) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @09:59AM (#21170893) Journal
    This is at least a decade old, was published in 2000 (I like the breathless "unearthed today", like it was some sort of secret -- the original Hancock paper is listed as having 29 cites) and has rather obvious applications for marketing, billing and security. The "oddly close to the data mining the NSA performed after 9/11" seems a bit excessive.

  • Don't worry! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peter Trepan (572016) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:00AM (#21170919)

    If you haven't done anything wrong, then you have nowhere to hide!

    Whoops - I mean nothing. Nothing to hide.

    • Correction: if you have done nothing ***the goverment considers wrong*** you have nothing to hide.

      What the govenrment cosiders wrong is subject to change at any time, without warning or restriction, you milage may very, contents may settle during rendition.

      PS: As for your sig, how about "Conservatives: nominate Ron Paul, the ONLY Republican candidate who does not want to preemptivly start a thermonuclear world war III. Liberals: for the love of God, make sure none of those nut cases get into power."

  • Hello world (Score:5, Funny)

    by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:01AM (#21170929)
    update Users set Status = 'suspicious' where Username in (SELECT Username, ipAddress, MissleAddress from IncomingCalls ic, OutgoinCalls oc where Volume = 'whispering' and Username not in (select Username from RepublicanDonors));

  • not a new language (Score:5, Informative)

    by roman_mir (125474) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:04AM (#21170975) Homepage
    this is a collection of libraries and some domain specific keywords/structures, but to say that this is a new language is a stretch of imagination.

    • A dialect?
    • Maybe they are just patent trolling.

      I wonder if this will get some people into trouble when they try to get cute and build logs on government operations.

      Damn. I cannot find the site, but there is one that essentially is titled "IP Addresses to NEVER Ping..." if you want to avoid trouble with the law. It contained thousands of addresses, hundreds of class group names, and these are held by universities, BBN, ATT, NSA, CIA, DEA, DIS, NIS, and all sorts of other alphabet soup letters.
  • Well, at least they didn't realize they could do it in perl and then give perl the bad name...

  • *AFTER* 9-11? (Score:3, Informative)

    by erroneus (253617) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:15AM (#21171175) Homepage
    I think we've been seeing a trickling of stories and evidence showing that Bush/Cheney/Addington were ALREADY doing many 'questionable' things prior to 9-11. At the speed of government, doesn't it make you ask how they were able to cobble together the DHS?! And if I recall, some of the surveillance activities declined by Qwest were requested prior to 9-11.

    Bottom line? 9-11 is irrelevant to their intent... 9-11 helped provide some justification in the eyes of some, but the evidence shows that this stuff has been planned WELL in advance of 9-11 and this is not a reaction or over-reaction.
      • Here's some interesting evidence [slashdot.org]. Note that Nacchio's testimony refers to events before 9/11/2001. Specifically, on 2/27/01, he met with NSA to discuss several projects, including at least one that Nacchio considered to be illegal and thus refused.
  • The language already exists: it's Soviet East German.

  • Hello World in Surveillance Language (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Lemming Mark (849014) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:19AM (#21171245) Homepage

    The manual for the language includes a Hello World variant

    Never has that program name been so fitting.

    • The manual for the language includes a Hello World variant

      Never has that program name been so fitting.

      Kinda gives a whole new dimension to "Reach out and touch someone", doesn't it?

  • The program for parsing millions of records as they flow into permanent data farms sounds oddly close to the data mining the NSA performed after 9/11 to find targets for its warrantless spying on American citizens calls and emails.

    Ok, this is going WAY too far! Could you have at lease included some LINKS to actual PROOF that ANY government agency conducted warrantless spying on US citizens? I mean other than the FUD that the NYT and Democrats spread which also is not based on any actual proof. IIRC the wa

    • Ok, this is going WAY too far! Could you have at lease included some LINKS to actual PROOF that ANY government agency conducted warrantless spying on US citizens?

      If they didn't do it, then why are they asking for immunity with the current legislation?
  • I try to stay upbeat about all this, I try to think of ways to fight back against this kind of crap, I do everything I can to not have to deal with this kind of obscenely orwellian garbage...but...sometimes it just hits ya right in the gut...and you feel dreadfully sick...
  • with a Manual Guide... I wonder when this application will "cock up" (in English parlance) and screw over people not part of the serve.. sir vail-ance ... umm surveillance.

    I thought many of these ISP and ISP parent companies had stated officially that they had issues with excessive data retention (storage space, processing of the enormous data sets, legal issues, etc...). Now, this, from one company that is probably going to make some enemies.

    What good (other than government surveillance and corporate marke

  • Did anyone read up on the language? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Weslee (1118943) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @11:22AM (#21172205)
    Its basically just C with some generic structures thrown on top of it.

    Also, it was created in 2000.
    Its intent, as some have mentioned, was marketing.
    Basically it does what Google Analytics or WebTrends does for the web.

    It actually seems like a nice language, for those who want to quickly run through gigs of data.

    I see nothing evil about the language itself.
    It, like C, perl, PHP, or any other language you chose to use - Can be used for whatever purpose the programmer chooses.
    Its intent was marketing, and almost every company in existence wants to know more about their customers.

  • Hancock Written Before 2001 (Score:4, Insightful)

    by squidguy (846256) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @11:43AM (#21172569)
    Gee, can you conspiracy theorists take a break for a second and consider that, just perhaps, this was written for commercial telecom management, marketing and fraud detection purposes? It was written and in the public domain before 9-11.
    The US Government uses Linux, so are we to presume that Linus Torvalds is an agent of George Bush and the broad conspiracy to spy on you?

  • AT&T may not have invented it entirely.... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Algorithmnast (1105517) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @11:54AM (#21172729)

    If you look here [findlaw.com] and research the case a bit, you'll find that a Maryland company may have actually been more responsible for ATT's abilities than ATT would like to admit. That company is now defunct, unfortunately, and so it's now safe for ATT to pretend that they've done work in the area without answering to more law suits.

    It was a very technically challenging job. We helped to index records for these guys [lexisnexis.com] until mid-2005. We did it in effectively O(n) time - the cool factor was higher than the say-nothing factor.

    And yes - I know that academia will claim that it's not possible, that data correlation must be O(n^2). For the decade that we did it, we were sure glad that academia held to that position.

    Enough reminiscing.

    • !constitution (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Iso (1088207) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @09:57AM (#21170865)
      Hancock signed the Declaration of Independence.

    • Re:Ironic Name (Score:5, Funny)

      by jhsiao (525216) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @09:59AM (#21170901)
      Even more ironic that someone so focused on the rights in the Constitution would mistake it for the Declaration of Independence.

      • Even more ironic that someone so focused on the rights in the Constitution would mistake it for the Declaration of Independence.
        We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all documents are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creators with certain identical Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness
        • We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all documents are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creators with certain identical Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness

          Funnily enough, Jefferson didn't actually "write" the preamble, so much as dictate it, and in his original vision our self-evident truths were: Life, Liberty and the pursuit of a penis. TJ didn't catch the goof in time, and the rest is our nonpenis-pursuing history.

      • Even more ironic, a programming language designed to spare lines of code named after the guy whose signature takes up the most space on the declaration of independence.

      • Re:That's the last thing we need! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by ByOhTek (1181381) on Tuesday October 30 2007, @10:15AM (#21171169) Journal
        While normally I'd quite agree with you, straight from the article (and not Zonk), right at the start:

        From the company that brought you the C programming language comes Hancock, a C variant developed by AT&T researchers to mine gigabytes of the company's telephone and internet records for surveillance purposes.


        less inflamitory, later it states:

        The system was built in the late 1990s to develop marketing leads, and as a security tool to see if new customers called the same numbers as previously cut-off fraudsters -- something the paper refers to as "guilt by association."


        It seems to have been created with slightly better intent (fraud detection, as well as, unfortunately, marketing - your phone company is spyware!).

        A tool may not necessarily be bad, but it can have more bad uses than good, and may be been intended for rathern malevolent purposes. The rack comes to mind (although this language certainly isn't in that league).
        • I'm going to be pedantic about the origins of C: C was not an AT&T invention, but was invented by Bell Labs researchers, which was not at the time wholly owned by AT&T. Ownership was evenly split between AT&T and Western Electric. Nowadays, Bell Labs is not even part of AT&T, but is owned by Alcatel-Lucent.
      • The problem has never been the tool. It's the application of the tool, and the people who wield it.

        Consider, for instance, a baseball bat. Under normal useage, it's used to play a game. Sure, accidents do happen, sometimes erious, but these are minority cases. For the most part, it's all in fun.

        Now consider that baseball bat in the hands of a crazed psychopath who thinks YOUR head is a baseball. See the difference?

      • Now if if someone is using a tool in a way you don't like, then just say so, don't try to cast aspersions on the tool itself.

        The problem with power is that if it can be abused... It will be.

        So it often behooves citizens to keep these tools out of the hands of the government as long as possible.

        Not that it will make much difference in the end.

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