Congress demands answers from White House over ‘invasive’ surveillance program known as Hemisphere that has tracked TRILLIONS of phone records for Americans each year – even if they are not suspected of a crime

Congress is demanding answers from the Biden administration about a secret spying program that tracks more than a trillion phone records of innocent and unsuspecting Americans every year.

The under-the-radar system, known as Data Analytical Services or ‘Hemisphere’, has been in use for more than a decade. It allows federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to access the phone records of U.S. citizens who have not done so. accused of any crime.

Under the Hemisphere program, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) is paying telephone provider AT&T to hand over telephone records dating back to 1987.

The deal first came to light in 2013 after a bombastic New York Times report, but has since expanded.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., has now written a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) demanding that documents related to the Hemisphere program be made public and raising “serious concerns” about its legality.

According to the letterWyden received “sensitive” information about the program from the DOJ, allowing him to view it but not share it with the general public.

The senator said the “disturbing information” he had learned about the program would “rightly outrage many Americans and other members of Congress.”

Republican Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona accused the government of spying on Americans.

The hemisphere is “invasive” and gives “government agents unlimited access to trillions of Americans’ domestic communications data,” he said.

Biggs continued, “The federal government does not care about your privacy and it is long past time that we end these abuses and hold rogue actors accountable.

“The Hemisphere Project exposes major loopholes in federal law that allow the government to spy on Americans without judicial oversight, such as purchasing personal data.”

Congress is currently considering the extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

That allows unauthorized surveillance of foreigners, but often overhears the conversations of Americans.

Biggs said it should also look at the Hemisphere program.

The AT&T database contains the location, time, phone number and other metadata of every phone call that passes through AT&T’s relay switches – an estimated 4 billion calls per day.

Because the database records every call that crosses the company’s lines, calls from users of other providers are also included.

Since 2007, federal agents have been able to access the wealth of information in minutes, simply by issuing a subpoena themselves.

It appears there is little or no judicial oversight over access to this information.

The program is primarily administered by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Its stated purpose is to help investigate drug traffickers and other complex criminal enterprises.

However, it has also been used to arrest jewelry store robbers, a murder suspect and even a woman who made nuisance bomb threats.

The program circumvents the usual privacy rules through a complex financing network.

Instead of funding the surveillance directly, the ONDCP provides a grant to the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, which in turn pays AT&T to implement the program.

As a result, Hemisphere is not subject to a federal Privacy Impact Assessment, like most projects funded by federal agencies.