Latest DEA Scandal: 'All Your Calls Belong To Us'

http://www.alternet.org/drugs/latest-dea-scandal-all-your-calls-belong-us

On Monday, the  New York Times revealed that since 2007 the DEA and other drug law enforcement officials have had routine access to an enormous AT&T database that contains the records of decades of most Americans' phone calls. The secretive, previously-undisclosed "Hemisphere Project" covers a much longer time –  26 years! –  than even the National Security Agency’s recently-disclosed collection of phone call logs, which store data on nearly all Americans' phone calls for "just" five years. And unlike the NSA, the Hemisphere Project records data about the location of callers, rather than just phone numbers and time and duration of calls.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of President Nixon’s establishment of the DEA. With an annual budget of more than $2.4 billion – not to mention 227 field offices and 86 foreign offices in 62 countries – the DEA certainly merits a top-to-bottom review of its operations, expenditures and discretionary actions.