DEA has a larger phone database than NSA

AT&T has been very modest about its role in crime fighting. In fact it has never mentioned it but the telecommunications giant has been working hand in glove with the DEA. The company has a database that dates back to 1987. For at least 6 years AT&T has been partnering for a drug free America in a secret program known as the Hemisphere Project. The government pays the company to embed employees in the DEA and although it does not own the actual database it has very rigid control over it. Not only does the DEA investigate drug crimes, it happily shares its information with other agencies including the IRS not to track terrorists but to ensure accurate 1040 forms. Forbes has a good account of that skulduggery.
The New York Times reports;

Hemisphere covers every call that passes through an AT&T switch — not just those made by AT&T customers — and includes calls dating back 26 years, according to Hemisphere training slides bearing the logo of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. Some four billion call records are added to the database every day, the slides say; technical specialists say a single call may generate more than one record. Unlike the N.S.A. data, the Hemisphere data includes information on the locations of callers.

Here the appropriate House committee could do an open investigation as Project Hemisphere does not enjoy the protection of the FISA courts nor can it claim executive privilege and it dare not redact documents. Nor does AT&T enjoy protection from tort suits that may arise as more be comes known. The DEA has produced a Power Point presentation apparently to train new AT&T employees who have been drafted into the war on drugs. Many of the "success stories" of the DEA are petty criminals with no connection to drug dealing or even drug use as in the example below.

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