In Lawsuit Challenging DEA Bulk Surveillance, Judge Gives Rare OK to Discovery | Electronic Frontier Foundation

20.8.15

In Lawsuit Challenging DEA Bulk Surveillance, Judge Gives Rare OK to Discovery | Electronic Frontier Foundation: The case stems from the DEA’s disclosure in January of this year that it had secretly collected Americans’ international call records in bulk for over two decades. News reports described the program as massive—sweeping in billions of records of Americans’ calls to more than 100 countries around the globe, including Canada, Mexico, India, and Italy. The DEA relied only on an obscure administrative subpoena statute to obtain the records in bulk. That means, unlike the NSA’s bulk surveillance program, there was no judicial involvement whatsoever. Making matters worse, reports confirm that multiple agencies searched the illegally collected records for all kinds of cases—from terrorism, to drug trafficking, to export violations.