Government agents have been collecting Americans’ phone records since 1992, according to USA Today. The U.S. Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Administration asked carriers for logs of almost all calls made from the U.S. to as many as 116 countries.
The logs were used for 20 years, and in 1995 they were used to rule out the possibility of foreign involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, according to the report. In the aftermath of the revelations made by Edward Snowden, the DEA stopped collecting phone records.
On Tuesday, a group called Human Rights Watch filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, claiming that the secret program illegally compromised the privacy of millions of innocent Americans.
The drug enforcement agency did not track call content, only the time the call was placed and the number called. The goal, of course, was to link certain numbers with drug traffic. USA Today reports that in a letter to Sprint asking the carrier to turn over its records, the government described the program as “one of the most important and effective Federal drug law enforcement initiatives.”
The government asked carriers for records of every call from the United States to designated countries. Most of those countries were in the Western Hemisphere, but parts of Asia were also included.
The agency suspended the program in 2013 because in the wake of Snowden’s allegations, the U.S. government said surveillance would not be used for routine law enforcement.
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