Democrat President Joe Biden’s White House has been caught pumping taxpayer funds into a secret surveillance program that allows authorities to conduct warrantless searches of Americans’ phone records.
However, while the program has continued under Biden, it was actually launched by former President Barack Obama’s administration.
It was roughly a decade ago when the unconstitutional and secretive White House-funded intelligence collection program was first publicly exposed by media reports.
At the time, the initial reports were based on documents obtained through leaks and the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
A new report has now revealed that was is essentially the same secret surveillance program, which allows law enforcement agencies at all levels to scrutinize phone company data without a warrant, has continued, albeit under a different name, according to Breitbart.
The revelation has sparked renewed constitutional and legal concerns about the expectations of privacy and freedom from unreasonable and warrantless searches of the American people.
Wired reported last week on a secret White House-led surveillance program known as Data Analytical Services.
The program is the same controversial program previously known as “Hemisphere” that was first exposed in 2013 by The New York Times.
It was ostensibly shut down in the wake of the initial reports.
However, the program has apparently been relaunched by Biden’s White House.
The DAS program, which is run in conjunction with AT&T, has received more than $6 million in taxpayer-funded grant funds from the White House over the past decade.
DAS allows law enforcement agencies at the local, state, tribal, and federal levels to use a technique known as “chain analysis.”
The technique effectively lets authorities collect phone records and data on virtually every single person in and beyond the United States, without their knowledge or consent.
Supposedly intended to only go after individuals involved in the illicit drug trade, leaked documents reveal that DAS has been used for a variety of other law enforcement purposes.
The White House has taken advantage of the program because it provides a sort of “loophole” that allows police to obtain information on criminal suspects — and innocent people — that would otherwise require a specific warrant application that might be disapproved by a judge.
Wired noted that documents showed that the Hemisphere program was purportedly shut down by then-President Obama following the initial Times report.
However, in actuality, the program was simply renamed and continued to be funded in secret by the Biden administration.
In addition to the obvious concerns about violations of privacy and warrantless searches, the secretive program has also raised alarms among some because there is no congressional oversight or independent federal review of the program, nor is the White House required to respond to FOIA requests about the DAS program.
The report from Wired followed close on the heels of a public letter sent from Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) to Attorney General Merrick Garland that addressed the various concerns about the DAS program and called upon the Department of Justice to publicly release as much information about the program as possible.
“I have serious concerns about the legality of this surveillance program, and the materials provided by the DOJ contain troubling information that would justifiably outrage many Americans and other members of Congress,” the Democratic senator wrote.
“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,” he added.
“The public interest in an informed debate about government surveillance far outweighs the need to keep this information secret.”
At another point in the letter, in reference to the trillions of phone records over multiple decades that are available for law enforcement to search without a warrant through the DAS program, Wyden wrote, “The scale of the data available to and routinely searched for the benefit of law enforcement under the Hemisphere Project is stunning in its scope,” and noted that law enforcement sources had described it as “AT&T’s Super Search Engine” as well as “Google on Steroids.”
In early November, Sen. Wyden announced that he had joined with Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) and others on bipartisan and bicameral legislation known as the Government Surveillance Reform Act that would seemingly address and correct the concerns raised about the DAS program and other questionable federal surveillance programs.
“Americans know that it is possible to confront our country’s adversaries ferociously without throwing our constitutional rights in the trash can,” Wyden said at the time.
“But for too long surveillance laws have not kept up with changing times.
“Our bill continues to give government agencies broad authority to collect information on threats at home and abroad, including the ability to act quickly in emergencies and settle up with the court later.
“But it creates much stronger protections for the privacy of law-abiding Americans, and restores the warrant protections that are at the heart of the Fourth Amendment.”
