Justice Department Kept Secret Telephone Database
Source: Wall Street Journal
WASHINGTON—The Justice Department secretly kept a database of U.S. calls to and from foreign countries for more than a decade, according to a new court filing and officials familiar with the program.
The revelation of another secret government database storing records of Americans’ calls came in a filing Thursday in the case of a man accused of conspiring to unlawfully export electronic goods to Iran.
A Drug Enforcement Administration official said in the three-page filing that the agency has long used administrative subpoenas—not federal court orders—to collect the metadata of U.S. calls to and from foreign countries “that were determined to have a demonstrated nexus to international drug trafficking and related criminal activities.’’
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A Justice Department official said the database was deleted and hasn’t been searched since 2013, and said the DEA is no longer collecting bulk telephone records from U.S. phone companies
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Read more: http://www.wsj.com/articles/justice-department-kept-secret-telephone-database-1421427624
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