Move Over, NSA: DEA Uses Bigger Phone-Call Database

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by tulianr, Sep 2, 2013.


  1. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    The Drug Enforcement Administration has been working closely with AT&T to access a database of American phone calls that dwarfs the NSA's controversial data-collecting efforts, the New York Times finds.

    In the "Hemisphere Project," which began in 2007, AT&T employees are embedded in anti-drug units across the country and supply them with phone call records from as far back as 1987, using a gargantuan database that collects four billion new records every day. The project covers not just calls made by AT&T users, but every call that goes through an AT&T switch.

    The project has been kept hush-hush, but a slideshow explaining it was obtained by a Washington state peace activist who submitted public information requests to police agencies. A Justice Department spokesman says the project "simply streamlines the process of serving the subpoena to the phone company so law enforcement can quickly keep up with drug dealers when they switch phone numbers to try to avoid detection" and stresses that the phone data is stored by the phone company, not the government.

    Legal experts and privacy advocates, however, says the scope of the project and the deep involvement of government agents in the process raises constitutional issues.


    Move Over, NSA: DEA Uses Bigger Phone-Call Database - AT&T workers embedded with anti-drug units
     
    ColtCarbine and Yard Dart like this.
  2. Yard Dart

    Yard Dart Vigilant Monkey Moderator

    The cumulative ability of all agencies can see, hear and watch all that is done via the phone and web.... compiling them into one data base is the main goal they have now. That will equate to a dossier on each of us that should paint a fairly good picture based on what you say, write and read.... which is against every ounce of our constitutional right to privacy and freedom of speach!!
     
    tulianr and ColtCarbine like this.
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