U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has called on Attorney General Merrick Garland to release public documents related to AT&T’s Hemisphere phone surveillance program, an initiative that allows law enforcement agencies extensive access to trillions of domestic phone records collected by AT&T, raising serious concerns about privacy and legality.
The program, which has been in place since 2009, allows law enforcement agencies to search AT&T customers’ phone records as far back as 1987.
The records include information on who called whom, when and for how long they spoke, and the location of the caller and receiver.
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 his letter to Garland, Wyden urged the department to remove those restrictions.
Wyden’s call for transparency comes as the Biden administration is considering whether to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which allows the government to collect the phone records of U.S. citizens without a warrant if they are believed to be communicating with foreign terrorists.
The Hemisphere project, first exposed in 2013 by The New York Times, revealed that the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) paid AT&T to mine and retain records of its customers’ phone calls.
According to Wyden’s letter, the program has been continuously funded and defunded by the government over the past decade, operating under various names, including “Data Analytical Services (DAS).”
Under Hemisphere, AT&T maintains a massive database of call records dating back to 1987, with four billion new records added daily. Law enforcement agencies, including federal, state, local, and Tribal entities, can request “often-warrantless searches” of these records. Notably, any law enforcement officer can send a request to a single AT&T analyst based in Atlanta, Georgia, even if the investigation is unrelated to drug-related cases.
Wyden expressed serious concerns about the scale and legality of the surveillance program in his letter to Attorney General Garland.
“I have long defended the government’s need to protect classified sources and methods, but this surveillance program is not classified, and its existence has already been acknowledged by the DOJ in federal court,” Wyden wrote. “The public interest in an informed debate about government surveillance far outweighs the need to keep this information secret.”
“The Hemisphere program is a massive dragnet surveillance program that allows law enforcement agencies to search the phone records of millions of Americans without a warrant,” Wyden said. “The public has a right to know about this program and how it is being used. I urge Attorney General Garland to release the documents related to this program so that the American people can have an informed debate about the government’s surveillance activities.”
Wyden’s call for transparency is supported by a number of civil liberties advocates such as New Jersey Democrat Lisa McCormick, and groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).
“Americans have a constitutional right to privacy, but intelligence agencies have for decades offered the false choice of keeping our country safe or protecting our privacy. But we can and must do both,” said McCormick. “We have learned the hard way that unchecked surveillance is a violation of our right to privacy. As new technologies emerge, we must ensure Americans’ privacy is protected.”
“The Hemisphere program is a prime example of the government’s overreach in surveillance,” said ACLU attorney Neema Singh Guha. “The public has a right to know about this program and how it is being used. We urge Attorney General Garland to release the documents related to this program so that the American people can have an informed debate about the government’s surveillance activities.”
“The Hemisphere program is a massive dragnet surveillance program that allows law enforcement agencies to search the phone records of millions of Americans without a warrant,” said EFF policy analyst Mark Rumreich. “The public has a right to know about this program and how it is being used. We urge Attorney General Garland to release the documents related to this program so that the American people can have an informed debate about the government’s surveillance activities.”
Since its passage in 2008, FISA’s Section 702 has been used by federal law enforcement to access sensitive information about people in the United States without a warrant, including their communications and location information, that should be protected by the Fourth Amendment.
The issue lies in the funding structure of the Hemisphere program. Instead of direct funding, ONDCP channels funds through the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA), a regional organization distributing federal anti-drug law grants. This structure allows Hemisphere to bypass mandatory federal privacy assessments, as it does not receive funds directly from a federal agency.
While the DOJ provided Wyden’s office with material related to Hemisphere in 2019, these documents have been labeled “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” preventing their release to the public. The senator is now urging the Attorney General to remove these restrictions and allow for transparency.
In response to the concerns raised by Hemisphere and similar surveillance programs, Senator Wyden, along with a bipartisan group of lawmakers, has introduced the Government Surveillance Reform Act. This legislation aims to establish new safeguards for government surveillance, accountability for abuses, and protections for Americans’ privacy rights.