News/Commentary

Bombshell report details surveillance program that allows authorities to track phone calls of Americans

November 25, 2023 | | Print Article

According to a bombshell new report, a barely known surveillance program has been tracking the U.S. phone records of millions of Americans.

“[A] surveillance program now known as Data Analytical Services (DAS) has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims,” Wired magazine has confirmed.

“Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program targets not only those in direct phone contact with a criminal suspect but anyone with whom those individuals have been in contact as well,” the magazine reported this week.

Formerly known as Hemisphere, the DAS program is reportedly run “in coordination” with AT&T.

Word of the program comes from Sen. Ron Wyden, who on Monday sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland challenging the program’s legitimacy.

“This is a long-running dragnet surveillance program in which the White House pays AT&T to provide all federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement agencies the ability to request often-warrantless searches of trillions of domestic phone records,” the letter reads.

ADVERTISEMENT

Keep in mind that AT&T is doing this voluntarily, presumably for profit.

“There is no law requiring AT&T to store decades’ worth of Americans’ call records for law enforcement purposes. Documents reviewed by WIRED show that AT&T officials have attended law enforcement conferences in Texas as recently as 2018 to train police officials on how best to utilize AT&T’s voluntary, albeit revenue-generating, assistance,” Wired notes.

Furthermore, records reportedly show that the White House has given the program $6 million over the years. That said, to his credit, former President Barack Obama stopped funding the program on the federal level after it was initially exposed in 2013  by The New York Times.

“However, individual law enforcement agencies were allowed to continue contracting with AT&T directly to use the service,” Fox News notes.

Plus, former President Donald Trump later reinstated federal funding, though current President Joe Biden then rescinded it when he took office in 2021.

ADVERTISEMENT

Regardless, in 2020, a non-profit whistleblower organization known as Distributed Denial of Secrets reportedly obtained and published a large quantity of law enforcement documents.

Upon reviewing the files, Wired magazine discovered “extraordinary detail[s] regarding the processes and justifications that agencies use to monitor the call records of not only criminal suspects, but of their spouses, children, parents, and friends.”

“While DAS is managed under a program devoted to drug trafficking, a leaked file from the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC) shows that local police agencies, such as those in Daly City and Oakland, requested DAS data for unsolved cases seemingly unrelated to drugs,” Wired notes.

In one case, an Oakland Police Department officer reportedly used “Hemisphere,” as it was still called at the time, to examine the calls of a suspect’s close friends so that said officer could find the phone number of the suspect.

ADVERTISEMENT

In another case, a San Jose Police Department officer reportedly asked the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center “to identify a victim and material witness in an unspecified case,” Wired notes.

“One officer, soliciting information from AT&T under the program, wrote: ‘We obtained six months of call data for [suspect]’s phone, as well as several close associations (his girlfriend, father, sister, mother).’ The records do not indicate how AT&T responds to every request,” according to Wired.

All this raises serious concerns about the privacy and civil liberties of everyday Americans, especially since the program reportedly operates without any judicial oversight or public accountability.

According to Fox News, the program “also contradicts the spirit of the USA Freedom Act, which was passed in 2015 to reform the bulk collection of phone records by the National Security Agency (NSA).”

“The act required the NSA to stop collecting phone records in bulk and instead request them from the phone companies on a case-by-case basis with a court order. However, the DAS program bypasses this requirement by allowing AT&T to collect and store the records for law enforcement purposes,” Fox News notes.

ADVERTISEMENT

Responding to news of the program, social media users were disturbed but not necessarily surprised.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
Latest posts by Vivek Saxena (see all)

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles