Indiscriminate spying was the DEA ’s blunt violence weapon of option in its “ War on Drugs . ” The Drug Enforcement Agency and the Justice Department tracked zillion of Americans ’ phone calls , even people not suspected of crimes , for decades — and it appear like confirmatory damage was n’t much of a concern .
New details from a USA Today probe made it very clear thatthe telescope of the DEA ’s surveillance computer program , which it admit to in January , was Brobdingnagian . Catch up with a Quaker in Montreal between the 1992 and 2013 ? Call home from a trip to Rome ? There ’s a full chance the government was keeping track .
For more than two decennium , the Justice Department and the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed logs of near all telephone calls from the USA to as many as 116 countries tie in to drug trafficking , current and former official involved with the operation allege . The targeted countries changed over time but included Canada , Mexico and most of Central and South America .
Surveillance was n’t limited to people suspected of , you know , drug trafficking or even associate with masses in the drug trafficking community or even smoke the occasional Bermuda grass . Instead , the DEA scooped up almost everyone ’s outside claim on its sketchy country list , just in case . So basically , anyone who had foreign friends or like to use their passport to travel was now fishy enough for administration surveillance .
The DEA did not immortalize the content of the calls , but hold meticulous records andqueried the database on a daily basis to root up likely drug connection , look at the log and where people where when they made cry .
The DEA used its data point collection extensively and in fashion that the NSA is now prohibited from doing . agent gain the records without motor lodge approval , searched them more often in a day than the spy bureau does in a year and automatically link the numbers the agency gather to large electronic collection of investigative reports , domestic call records accumulated by its agents and intelligence data from overseas .
In most cases , it come along the extraneous political science were all right with the dragnet . patently , so were George H.W. Bush , Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , and Barack Obama , since the program continued over the course of their presidency . Andphone companies ’ cooperation was integral to the programme :
The DEA did not have a real - clock time link to phone companies ’ information ; instead , the companies regularly provided copy of their call logs , first on computer disks and later over a private net . agentive role who used the organization said the numbers they look were rarely more than a few days old .
Again , this go on for decades . Decades ! It only stopped in September 2013 , after Edward Snowden pop off public with his knowledge ofthe NSA ’s similar surveillance program . The DEA program is a clear forerunner to the NSA program .
As news of the detail of this intrusive program have out , it ’s already facing backlash . Human Rights Watch isfiling a case to stop all continuing DEA bulk data point collection .
Oh , and the reason this platform got shut down ? Well , it was catch less utile as the drug residential district started using the internet to talk , which is why the DEAhates how knockout it is to spy on iMessages .
But it mostly got close down to make the regime look like its employee were n’t lying through their bureaucratic tooth . political science officials realized they would be flagrantly lie saying they only transmit bulk surveillance to stop terrorists , not to nab green goddess supplier .
Officials said the Justice Department tell the DEA that it had determine it could not continue both surveillance program , particularly because part of its justification for wholesale NSA surveillance was that it serve national surety interestingness , not average policing .
The simple existence of this DEA program quadruple underline , in flare red permanent marker , that the politics ’s surveillance programs are , as a issue of historic disk , not solely guided by national certificate interests .
[ USA Today ]
Image via AP
DrugsPoliticsPrivacysnowdenSurveillance
Daily Newsletter
Get the good tech , skill , and culture newsworthiness in your inbox day by day .
news program from the future , have to your present .
Please take your desired newssheet and submit your electronic mail to upgrade your inbox .
You May Also Like
