Well, you knew more shoes would drop, and to the world of crime this is the big one: they call it the "Hemisphere Project."
AT&T and the DEA, in a joint program (heh!) collected every phone record that passed through an AT&T switch -- so basically every cell phone call in North America and some land lines, too. The DEA paid for it, and AT&T has been quietly giving them what they ask for via High Intensity Drug Trafficking-designated employees, with no pesky judge in the way.
Interestingly, this revelation is not from the Snowden files but from anti-war activist Drew Hendricks in Port Hadlock, WA, who obtained it as a series of PowerPoint slides after filing a public information request from an unnamed West Coast law-enforcement agency.
AT&T and the DEA, in a joint program (heh!) collected every phone record that passed through an AT&T switch -- so basically every cell phone call in North America and some land lines, too. The DEA paid for it, and AT&T has been quietly giving them what they ask for via High Intensity Drug Trafficking-designated employees, with no pesky judge in the way.
Interestingly, this revelation is not from the Snowden files but from anti-war activist Drew Hendricks in Port Hadlock, WA, who obtained it as a series of PowerPoint slides after filing a public information request from an unnamed West Coast law-enforcement agency.
“'All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,' one slide says. A search of the Nexis database found no reference to the program in news reports or Congressional hearings."
