November 22, 2023 9:30 a.m.  

This week U.S. Senator Ron Wyden called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to make public documents related to the Hemisphere phone surveillance program, which allows federal, state, local and Tribal law enforcement agencies to request searches of trillions of U.S. phone records, usually without warrants.

A release said although the documents are not classified, the Justice Department has marked them as “Law Enforcement Sensitive”, which is meant to prevent them from being publicly released. In a letter sent to Garland on Monday, Wyden urged the department to remove those restrictions.

Wyden wrote, “I have serious concerns about the legality of this surveillance program, and the material provided by the DOJ contain troubling information that would justifiably outrage many Americans and other members of Congress”. Wyden said, “While I have long defended the government’s need to protect classified sources and methods, this surveillance program is not classified and its existence has already been acknowledged by the DOJ in federal court. The public interest in an informed debate about government surveillance far outweighs the need to keep this information secret”.

The release said under the Hemisphere program, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy indirectly pays AT&T to allow any federal, state, local or Tribal law enforcement agency to search AT&T customers’ phone records as far back as 1987, according to public records about the program.

Wyden said Hemisphere has not been subjected to a federal Privacy Impact Assessment because of its unique funding structure. Rather than directly funding the surveillance program, the ONDCP provides a grant to the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a partnership between federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, which in turn pays AT&T to operate this surveillance program. Wyden said law enforcement agencies nationwide are able to request Hemisphere searches, including for investigations that are not drug related.

The bipartisan Government Surveillance Reform Act would require a court order for surveillance of American’s phone records, the same standards currently required for the government to obtain historical email and instate message metadata records.

Wyden’s full letter to Garland is linked: https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/wyden_hemisphere_surveillance_letter_112023.pdf