‘Stunning’ Surveillance Program Lets Law Enforcement Spy on Trillions of US Phone Calls

According to a recent letter sent by a U.S. senator to the Justice Department, there’s a secret surveillance program tracking more than a trillion phone records within the United States each year.

The six-page letter sent by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to U.S. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, and obtained and first reported by WIRED, questions the legality of the Hemisphere Project. It’s a project described in the letter as “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.”

According to Wyden’s letter, the Hemisphere Project was renamed “Data Analytical Services” (DAS) after the New York Times revealed the existence of the program in 2013. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) paid AT&T to gather the details of Americans’ telephone calls for the benefit of law enforcement agencies who can access records of those calls at any time. 

This DAS program includes analyzing the phone records of people not suspected of any crime, including victims, WIRED reported. 

Using a technique known as chain analysis, the program also tracks alternative telephone numbers

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