Judge Orders DEA Disclosure of U.S. Agencies Using Massive Phone Spying Program but Keeps Most Corporate Colluders Secret

Tuesday, July 5, 2016
By Paul Martin

By Nick Rummell, Courthouse News Service
AllGov.com
Tuesday, July 05, 2016

NEWARK, N.J. (CN) — A federal judge ruled that the Drug Enforcement Agency must release some information sought by a privacy group that relates to a secretive government data mining program.

The June 24 ruling requires the DEA to release a list of other government agencies that use the so-called Hemisphere Project (pdf)—a secret program started in 2007 in which the U.S. government collects data on nearly four billion telephone calls a day. The ruling also requires the agency to disclose which AT&T locations are used for the program.

However, the bulk of the requested documents sought by privacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center —including other possible private corporations besides AT&T that cooperate with the government on the program— remain under lock and key.

The Hemisphere Project’s existence was made public in 2013, but details on how the program works have been scant. AT&T reportedly manages the call database, which is funded in part by the DEA and the White House’s Office of National Drug Control Policy. The program has been touted by government officials as an efficient method to hunt down criminals who have ditched old cell phones to avoid being traced.

A Freedom of Information Act request filed in 2013 by EPIC sought legal analyses and internal memos related to the secret program. The DEA, which mines the call database, provided some documents but withheld more than 100 others.

In response the privacy group filed a lawsuit in early 2014, claiming that it was “hard to believe” the DEA had no documents related to the privacy issues concerning the program.

In the 42-page ruling (pdf), U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan wrote that since AT&T’s collaboration on Hemisphere has been publicly known for years, further information should be released on which companies have worked on the program.

The Rest…HERE

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