Hemisphere Project: AT&T Hosting Massive User Database for DEA

The federal government, working in partnership with the private telecommunications giant AT&T, maintains an elaborate database of phone user data that surpasses anything even the NSA is using, according to new reporting by the New York Times.

Based on documents obtained by a New York citizen via a Freedom of Information Act request, the Times says that “for at least six years, law enforcement officials working on a counternarcotics program have had routine access, using subpoenas, to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of Americans’ phone calls.”

Details of the program were made available in a series of slides released as part of the FOIA disclosure and are viewable here.

The secretive program, which has never been reported on before, raises significant privacy and constitutional concerns, the ACLU’s deputy legal director Jameel Jaffer says. “One reason for the secrecy of the program is that it would be very hard to justify it to the public or the courts,” stated Jaffer.

As the Times reports—and Jaffer notes as of particular concern—the program, called Hemisphere Project, shows a deep coordination between private industry and government surveillance practices. According to the Times:

Reactions to disclosure of the program on Twitter:

Tweets about “”Hemisphere Project””

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