CV NEWS FEED // A major technology magazine unleashed a report showing that a largely unknown surveillance program employed by the Biden White House handed the records of trillions of phone conversations conducted by American citizens over to the police.
Wired noted that Data Analytical Services (DAS) “has for more than a decade allowed federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to mine the details of Americans’ calls, analyzing the phone records of countless people who are not suspected of any crime, including victims.”
The magazine reported that the program, “formerly known as Hemisphere, is run in coordination with the telecom giant AT&T, which captures and conducts analysis of US call records for law enforcement agencies, from local police and sheriffs’ departments to US customs offices and postal inspectors across the country.”
“Records show that the White House has provided more than $6 million to the program, which allows the targeting of the records of any calls that use AT&T’s infrastructure,” Wired added.
AT&T is the largest cell phone carrier in the United States. In the third quarter of 2023, it boasted a market share of 47% of wireless subscriptions – well ahead of Verizon and T-Mobile with 29% and 24% respectively.
The Wired report cited a letter from Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
“I write to request that you clear for public release additional information about the Hemisphere Project,” Wyden stated in the letter dated last week.
He called DAS-Hemisphere “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.”
“The scale of the data available to and routinely searched for the benefit of law enforcement under the Hemisphere Project is stunning in its scope,” Wyden continued.
“One law enforcement official described the Hemisphere Project as ‘AT&T’s Super Search Engine’ and … ‘Google on Steroids,’ according to emails released by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) under the Freedom of Information Act,” added the senator.
Wired specified that what DAS-Hemisphere is doing is “not wiretapping, which on US soil requires a warrant based on probable cause.”
The report also clarified that the records “do not include recordings of any conversations,” but instead “include a range of identifying information, such as the caller and recipient’s names, phone numbers, and the dates and times they placed calls, for six months or more at a time.”
Breitbart’s Lucas Nolan indicated that “despite the vastness of its operation,” DAS-Hemisphere “has largely flown under the radar, with minimal public awareness until recently.”
“This secrecy is compounded by the fact that the White House, exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, oversees the program, further reducing public visibility into its workings,” he wrote:
Recent leaks and public records have revealed the extensive use of DAS in various law enforcement contexts. These include requests for “Hemisphere analysis” to identify suspects through their social connections, further underscoring the program’s expansive scope.
The leaked files also show a range of officials, from postal inspectors to parole officers, participating in DAS training sessions, indicating its widespread adoption across different law enforcement branches.
Wired is published by Condé Nast, a media conglomerate that also notably publishes several left-wing magazines including The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Condé Nast’s Global Chief Content Officer Anna Wintour is a major Democratic donor.
