On Monday, The Daily Beast published a hugely important story about AT&T’s in house, for profit surveillance operation called Project Hemisphere. The program has nothing to do with information sharing legally required under a warrant, but rather consists of a business line through which the telecom giant stores customer data longer than peers in order to turn around and sell it to government agencies (no warrant required). This allows law enforcement to use secret and never disclosed evidence to build a cases against citizens via a shady and unaccountable practice known as parallel construction.
The article is titled, AT&T Is Spying on Americans for Profit, New Documents Reveal, and is a must read.
Here are some key excerpts:
In 2013, Hemisphere was revealed by The New York Times and described only within a Powerpoint presentation made by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The Times described it as a “partnership” between AT&T and the U.S. government; the Justice Department said…
