You probably associate the surveillance state with the post-9/11 national security bulk-up. But in fact, we have something quite different to thank for mass phone surveillance: the drug war.
It’s not exactly news that the DEA has long been spying on people, but USA Today has uncovered just how extensive their program really was, labeling it “the first known effort” at mass surveillance of American citizens—and the model on which the NSA would build its own surveillance machine years later.
Like the NSA’s infamous phone program, the DEA’s “USTO” program collected phone metadata, regardless of whether its owners were suspected of any crime. But in some respects it was even more invasive and legally-dubious than the NSA—the agents did not have any kind of court approval, looked through more records in one day than the NSA might in a year, and funneled off information to massive intelligence collections.
The investigation found that the government spied on billions of calls for nearly two decades, logging calls from the USA to 115 countries, including Canada and Mexico. This program had “little independent oversight,” according to officials who spoke with USA Today.
From USA Today:
More than a dozen current and former law enforcement and intelligence officials described the details of the Justice Department operation to USA TODAY. Most did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence program, part of which remains classified.
The program dates all the way back to George H.W. Bush’s 1992 administration—nine years before the NSA’s program began. The Justice Department put the brakes on it in 2013, while dealing with the PR disaster of Snowden’s revelations on NSA spying. Now the DEA sends subpoenas to companies for specific phone numbers involved in investigations. The Justice Department told USA Today that the DEA “is no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers.”
While in use, the DEA kept its program secret, declining in most cases to use evidence obtained through it in court. This led to a Reuters report on how using shady intelligence methods like this can actually jeopardize cases.
Human Rights Watch has now sued the DEA over the program, alleging that their records were “collected, retained, searched, and disseminated without any suspicion of wrongdoing and without any judicial authorization or oversight.”
