The DEA insides warned about the legality of the phone surveillance program

When the drug The access of the application administration to a secret skin of billions of American telephone records was exhibited in 2013, the Obama administration said that the data were collected in a perfect legal program.

However, the supporters of civil freedoms were not convinced that the data collection program – who left the Da to see who you called and who they called – was above the board.

Now, lawyers are learning more than a decade later that they had a clutch of surprised allies: the DA officials from within – whose internal alarms were kept secret.

The results of the guards launched last week show that government officials have raised questions about the program for good years-including a high-ranking DEA agent, who has expressed “major” problems. The FBI even stopped the access of their own agents to the database for months.

The “Hemisphere” project of the DEA has continued despite the detention – and continues to this day.

With new details about the program that comes to light, the supporters of civil freedoms in Washington, including those in Congress, raise their concerns again. A group of guards said that the latest revelations show that the program was defective from the beginning.

“There should be no question from the beginning that this program would need an adequate legal analysis, to determine if there is the authority for the Government to obtain this type of bulk information through administrative cities,” said Jeramie Scott, a main counselor at the Electronic Confidentiality Center. “It is a real failure to supervise and responsibility that the years have passed without a proper legal analysis.”

Massive collection

When the DEA program was made public, it immediately attracted comparisons with National Security Agency Database of internal phone calls revealed by Edward Snowden.

The key details of the DEA program were shocking for civil freedom lawyers: AT&T has made available to billions of telephone call records for the agency and other law enforcement agencies in exchange for payment.

These records did not include the content of calls but included information about metadata on time and information about the number called, According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The data has expanded far beyond the AT&T customers, because most calls go through AT&T switches at a given time.

The “Hemisphere” project could provide call data not only about who communicates a target, but also the so-called “Two-HOP” data about who was the second person in telephone contact.

The authorities could request the appeal records, sending a request to AT&T – without the need for a court decision – and the company asked the Government to maintain the secret of the program. DA sought to even cover the existence of the program, later sending traditional cities in cases directed to the court, a process known as “parallel construction. “

The program is also administered by regional anti-drug offices using money provided by the White House Office of the National Drug Control Policy, a convolved structure that Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore. said in 2023 He allowed him to jump a mandatory review of federal confidentiality.

When the program was revealed by the New York Times in 2013The Department of Justice has reduced concerns about civil freedoms. He argued that the program is not different from the long -term practice of underponing individual telephony providers.

However, critics said the program had vast differences. “Hemisphere” produced information within a few hours instead of Monday; Included “two hop” data about the people who interacted with the target phone call partners; And could provide analysis in response to an “advanced” information request.

The “advanced” products from AT&T seem to have involved the opportunity to discover location data on mobile phones and to identify possible replacement phone numbers for so-called DROP or Burner phones, according to Electronic Conformation Center’s Scott.

Scott, whose non -profit has sued the Government for records in the program, said that the search for fall phones probably involved an analysis on the AT&T part, taking it for legal purposes far beyond the typical “business records” that can be obtained by administrative cities.

Internal alarm

The “advanced” searches, in particular, raised internal concerns, according to portions of a 2019 report from the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice, which were just made public last week.

Department of justice issued the new version of that report Six years after its original publication, after taking advantage of Wyden and Rep. Andy Biggs, r-ariz.

The new version shows that legal questions have been raised about the “Hemisphere” program at least four times. In 2007, in the same year in which he started, a DEA supervisor asked the office of the chief counselor for “insurance” that the program has the legal approval.

The Legal Bureau began to examine the program, sending the agents a request for more information about the “geographical” data it produced. However, the legal analysis came out without reaching a conclusion, according to the recently revealed portions of the inspector general report. The report said that there was no “any evidence”, that the lawyers “addressed substantially the high problem in the memorandum at a later date”.

In February 2008, a special DA responsible agent expressed “major concerns” on how the program was used in an E -Email to High Officials of the DEA. This E -mail produced an official memorandum approved by the Agency’s lawyers with a data request protocol, but the memorandum was never distributed to the employees in the field.

In August 2010, the best lawyer of the FBI contacted DEA with concerns about the “Hemisphere” program. What FBI discovered alarmed enough to completely suspend the use of the program later that month.

The discussions regarding the legality of the “advanced” product of the program continued for months, attracting other agencies that hired the telephone database, including the alcohol, tobacco, firearms and explosive weapons of the Department of Justice, as well as the Department of Inner Security.

Finally, the FBI reinstalled the access of its agents, but limited the type of information it could request. The exact nature of this self-imposed limit remains reduced in the latest version of the inspector general report.

Scott said it is worth noting that FBI has curved its agents access to certain analyzes when other agencies, such as DA, have left before.

“The DEA has had fewer qualifications about using the advanced products that FBI seemed to believe that they were legally questionable,” he said.

From September 2012 to January 2013, one of the internal lawyers of the DA made a project to analyze the “hemisphere” program that concluded that it is on a solid legal basis. However, this analysis has never been completed or distributed, says the inspector general report.

Program in progress

While the revelation of the DEA program in September 2013 caused a large -scale alarm among civil freedom lawyers, it has never aroused significant restrictions.

Instead, as Wyden detailed in a November 2023 letter To attack then, General Merrick Garland, the program continued after fit and starts “under a new generic sound program,” data analysis services “.

By issuing the unrelated portions of the report, the Trump administration seems to have taken a step forward on transparency, but it is not clear if it will follow with the reforms. (The White House did not respond to a comment request.)

In Congress, Wyden, Biggs and other members have pushed an act of reform of government supervision for years that would address a wide range of concerns. Among other policy changes would require the regular reports of the inspector general on the “hemisphere”.