cursichella1
2nd September 2013, 20:18
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-phone-trove-eclipsing-nsas.html?pagewanted=1
Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s
BySCOTT SHANE and COLIN MOYNIHAN Published: September 1,2013 386 Comments
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 — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.
The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.
The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.
For the rest of the article (it gets better, especially the NY Times readers' comments), follow the link above.
Hardly shocking news, except for the DECADES of saved (for a rainy day...) records. I wonder if this gov't "partnership" was what resurrected at&t from the ashes after they had dissolved the company several years back?
Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.’s
BySCOTT SHANE and COLIN MOYNIHAN Published: September 1,2013 386 Comments
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 — parallel to but covering a far longer time than the National Security Agency’s hotly disputed collection of phone call logs.
The Hemisphere Project, a partnership between federal and local drug officials and AT&T that has not previously been reported, involves an extremely close association between the government and the telecommunications giant.
The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987.
For the rest of the article (it gets better, especially the NY Times readers' comments), follow the link above.
Hardly shocking news, except for the DECADES of saved (for a rainy day...) records. I wonder if this gov't "partnership" was what resurrected at&t from the ashes after they had dissolved the company several years back?