In my recent remarks on the PATRIOT Act I remarked that a lot of the PATRIOT Act consisted of proposals the Justice Department had been seeking for years but was unable to get through Congress until the panicked atmosphere following the 9-11 attacks.
Well it turns out that the Federal Government was not waiting for Congress to pass the PATRIOT Act to begin collecting our phone records without a warrant. USA Today has revealed that the Drug Enforcement Agency being keeping records of telephone calls from US citizens to certain "targeted" countries in 1992....almost a decade before the PATRIOT Act passed!
The program was discontinued in 2014, in part in order to allow the Justice Department to claim that mass surveillance and data collection was only being used for terrorism.
The DEA's program targeted calls made to countries "linked": to drug trafficking. So if you called a friend or relative from a country housing a drug cartel between 1992 and 2014 you are an object of DEA surveillance-- even if there is no evidence you had any ties to a drug cartel!
Campaign for Liberty is working to block the confirmation of pro-surveillance state Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch. Please support our efforts by singing the No On Lynch petition today.
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PDFTags: NSA, Loretta Lynch, Drug Enforment Agency