EFF Seeks Release of 'Massive' DEA Phone Database at Federal Court Hearing Thursday
The Electronic Frontier Foundation said it will press the U.S. District Court in San Francisco at a Thursday hearing to make public a "massive" drug enforcement database that contains several decades' worth of of telephone metadata. The Drug Enforcement Administration…
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and local drug enforcement officials partnered with AT&T to develop "the Hemisphere Project," with funding from the DEA and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The New York Times revealed the database in a 2013 story, reporting that embedded AT&T employees in drug-fighting units across the U.S. supplied agents and local detectives with Americans' phone data dating back to 1987. EFF filed a Freedom of Information Act request for more information about the program, but said it was given "only a small amount of heavily redacted records in response." At the hearing, EFF Senior Staff Attorney Adam Schwartz plans to argue that the government "must stop misusing public records law to hide information about Hemisphere."