When it was discovered that the Drug Enforcement Administration (“DEA”) had obtained access to billions of American phone records through a program they called “Hemisphere,” advocates for civil liberties were not convinced—in spite of assurances by the Obama administration—that the program was legal.

When the Hemisphere program came to light, advocates began sounding the alarm. What these advocates were unaware of until more than a decade later was that officials within the DEA had also been sounding alarms. These alarms were covered up internally.

After some pushing by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Representative Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), the Justice Department released a new version of a report that had been produced by the office of the Inspector General six years earlier. This report shows that questions regarding the Hemisphere program had been raised several times.

The same year that the Hemisphere program was started, a DEA supervisor requested assurance from the agency’s chief counsel that the program was legally approved.

The report prepared by the Inspector General’s office states that there was “no evidence” that the DEA’s lawyers had substantially addressed the issue raised in the memorandum at a later date.

A DEA in-house lawyer did an analysis of the Hemisphere program and declared it was legal. However, according to the Inspector General, that report was never finalized or distributed.

In 2008, a special agent in charge at the DEA expressed major concerns about how the program was being used.

After contacting the DEA in August 2010 with concerns about the Hemisphere program, the top lawyer for the FBI had enough doubts about the program for the FBI to completely suspend use of the program later that month.

Even the FBI had serious enough concerns about that particular program to prohibit their agents from accessing it for several months. When the FBI did return to allowing their agents to access the Hemisphere program, their agents were limited in the type of information they could request. The facts concerning the extent of those limits are still unclear.

Jeramie Scott, a senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, stated, “The DEA had fewer qualms about using advanced products that the FBI seemed to think were legally questionable.”

Questions concerning the Hemisphere program’s “advanced” product continued for months. Other agencies, such as the Justice Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives as well as the Department of Homeland Security—which employed the program—were drawn into the discussion.

When The New York Times learned of the Hemisphere program in 2013, the Justice Department stated that the program was the same as the long-used practice of subpoenaing individual phone providers.

However, reports show that the Hemisphere program was different in a number of significant ways. It not only provided the numbers that the target number had called, it showed the numbers called by those who had received calls from the target number. An “advanced” information request could provide additional information such as cellphone location and replacement numbers for burner phones.

Jeramie Scott stated, “There should have been no question from the very start that this program needed proper legal analysis to determine whether there was the authority for the government to obtain this type of information in bulk through administrative subpoenas.”

A press release shows that, in September 2024, the Biden administration informed Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) that it had stopped funding for the Hemisphere program.

The revelations about the DEA’s Hemisphere program—and the years of internal warnings that were ignored—highlight the dangers of unchecked mass surveillance and the erosion of privacy rights. Despite serious legal and ethical concerns raised by the FBI, DEA officials, and even the Justice Department’s own watchdog, the program operated for years with minimal oversight, collecting billions of phone records without clear legal authority. Its eventual shutdown under pressure from Congress underscores the need for transparency and accountability in government surveillance, but the case leaves troubling questions: How many other secret programs exist, and what safeguards prevent their abuse? Without stronger legal limits and independent oversight, Hemisphere may serve as a warning—not an anomaly—in an era of ever-expanding digital surveillance.  

Source: The Intercept

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