Typically, for law enforcement agencies to obtain your phone records, they would need to first obtain a warrant from a judge. Warrants can be difficult to obtain and must be specifically focused in order to protect your constitutional right to privacy. However, for the past several years AT&T has been making it much easier for police to get your phone records. For a price, of course.
The Daily Beast has obtained documents which show that AT&T stores customer data as far back as 2008, and charges from $100,000 to over $1 million a year for law enforcement agencies to access this data. This program, called Project Hemisphere, gives law enforcement access to your phone records without a warrant, at the cost of millions of taxpayer dollars.
Project Hemisphere doesn't just store the records of your phone calls, either. It also stores metadata, which includes information like your phone's location when making calls. Even if you're not an AT&T customer, your data is recorded and stored in the database if the person you are talking to is. All of this is available to participating agencies with no court order required.
The New York Times first revealed the existence of Project Hemisphere in 2013, where it was framed as a "partnership" between AT&T and the Justice Department to fight the war on drugs. However, The Daily Beast has revealed that Hemisphere was instead a product marketed to law enforcement agencies to use in almost any investigation.
Most crucially, AT&T mandates that law enforcement agencies using Hemisphere never disclose their use of the database to the public. The agreement even prevents agencies from disclosing the use of Hemisphere to the people they're investigating, potentially forcing investigators to lie about how information was obtained.
We have contacted AT&T for comment and will update this post if there is a response.
Source: The Daily Beast via The Next Web
