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Reuters is reporting on a lawsuit filed against the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) by Human Rights Watch. The lawsuit, filed on April 7, 2015, seeks to have the DEA's bulk collection program [autoplay video, exclusive report by USA TODAY] declared unlawful.
From the Reuters article:
Opening another front in the legal challenges to U.S. government surveillance, a human rights group has sued the Drug Enforcement Administration for collecting bulk records of Americans' telephone calls to some foreign countries.
Lawyers for Human Rights Watch filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles. The lawsuit asks a judge to declare unlawful the DEA program, which ended in September 2013 after about 15 years, and to bar the DEA from collecting call records in bulk again.
U.S. spying programs have come under court scrutiny since former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden leaked details of them in 2013.
Justice Department spokesman Patrick Rodenbush said on Wednesday the DEA program is not active.
"All of the information has been deleted," he said in an email to Reuters. "The agency is no longer collecting bulk telephony metadata from U.S. service providers."
The DEA's Special Operations Division collected data in bulk about international calls from the United States to certain countries determined by the government to have a nexus to drug trafficking.
The data included phone numbers and the date, time and duration of each call, but not the content, according to the DEA.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday April 09 2015, @05:55PM
The government's approach on similar cases has been to move to dismiss for lack of standing.
The DEA isn't an intelligence agency. Presumably they were using this evidence in cases that went on the public record.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MrGuy on Thursday April 09 2015, @06:29PM
Doesn't seem likely to me. You're expect that the government willingly entered evidence obtained through dragnet warrantless mass surveillance at a public trial? I don't see any evidence of a FISA or other judicial sanction for this program. Aside from any remotely competent lawyer having an easy time getting admittedly illegally collected evidence thrown out, why would the government risk exposure of such a program by publicly admitting it exists?
My guess is that, to the extent this was used at all, it was presented purely in summary as "information from a confidential source" in warrant applications to GET wiretap warrants for the actual targets. Or maybe they just to know who to follow around until they found activity sufficiently suspicious to apply for a warrant on other grounds.
Regardless, I don't know how this gets around the standing issue. Unless HRW was targeted as an organization, it's not clear they have standing to object to individuals being surveilled. At best, IF the government openly presented evidence of this program on the record at trial, you've identified a small number of individuals (the ones targeted in those cases) who MIGHT have standing to object to the program. And even there, if they had a trial and were competently represented by council, if they didn't object to the basis of this evidence at trial, it's not completely clear that they're entitled to re-litigate that issue after the trial is over.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tathra on Thursday April 09 2015, @08:16PM
the DEA is the primary recipient of the NSA dragnet. [washingtonpost.com]