November 20, 2023

The Honorable Merrick B. Garland

Dear Attorney General Garland:

I write to request that you clear for public release additional information about the
Hemisphere Project. This is a long-running dragnet surveillance program in which the
White House pays AT&T to provide all federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement
agencies the ability to request often-warrantless searches of trillions of domestic phone
records.

In 2013, the New York Times revealed the existence of a surveillance program in which
the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) pays AT&T to mine
its customers’ records for the benefit of federal, state, local, and Tribal law enforcement
agencies. According to an ONDCP slide deck, AT&T has kept and queries as part of the
Hemisphere Project call records going back to 1987, with 4 billion new records being
added every day. That slide deck was apparently disclosed by a local law enforcement
agency in response to a public information request and was published by the New York
Times in 2013.

The scale of the data available to and routinely searched for the benefit of law
enforcement under the Hemisphere Project is stunning in its scope. One law enforcement
official described the Hemisphere Project as “AT&T's Super Search Engine” and ...
"Google on Steroids,” according to emails released by the Drug Enforcement
Administration (DEA) under the Freedom of Information Act. The ONDCP slide deck
and an email released by the DEA also reveal that AT&T searches records kept by its
wholesale division, which carries communications on behalf of other communications
companies and their customers. Another slide deck released by ONDCP and published by
the press in 2014 describes the specific capabilities of Hemisphere, including that it can
be used to identify alternate numbers used by a target, obtain location data and “two
levels of call detail records for one target number” (meaning the phone records of
everyone who communicated with the target).

The Hemisphere Project has been supported by regular funding from the White House
ONDCP since 2009, according to the attached undated white paper that ONDCP
provided to my office on October 27, 2022 (Appendix A). That same document reveals
that White House funding for this program was suspended by the Obama Administration
in 2013, the same year the program was exposed by the press, but continued with other
federal funding under a new generic sounding program name, “Data Analytical
Services.” ONDCP funding for this surveillance program was quietly resumed by the
Trump Administration in 2017, paused again in 2021, the first year of the Biden
Administration, and then quietly restarted again in 2022.

Although the Hemisphere Project is paid for with federal funds, they are delivered to
AT&T through an obscure grant program, enabling the program to skip an otherwise
mandatory federal privacy review. If the funds came directly from a federal agency, such
as the DEA, Hemisphere would have been subjected to a mandatory Privacy Impact
Assessment conducted by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of Privacy and Civil
Liberties, the findings of which would be made public. Instead, ONDCP provides
funding for the program through the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area
(HIDTA), one of 33 regional funding organizations as a part of a grant program created
by Congress and administered by ONDCP. The HIDTAs distribute federal anti-drug law
enforcement grants to state and local agencies, and are governed by a board made up
entirely of federal, state and local law enforcement officials.

ONDCP provided my staff with an undated white paper describing the program and its
historical funding levels, but ONDCP directed all questions about Hemisphere to the
Houston HIDTA. Officials at the Houston HIDTA provided my office with a briefing on
November 7, 2022, and spoke again with my staff by phone on December 1, 2022. The
Houston HIDTA officials told my staff that all Hemisphere requests are sent to a single
AT&T analyst located in Atlanta, Georgia, and that any law enforcement officer working
for one of the federal, state, local and Tribal law enforcement agencies in the U.S. can
contact the AT&T Hemisphere analyst directly to request they run a query, with varying
authorization requirements. The Houston HIDTA officials confirmed that Federal and
state law enforcement agencies can request a Hemisphere search with a subpoena, which
is a directive that many law enforcement agencies can issue themselves (except in
California and Texas, where a court order is required by state law). They also explained
that Hemisphere searches are not required to be in support of drug-related investigations.

For the past year, I have urged the DOJ to release dozens of pages of material related to
the Hemisphere Project, which it first provided to my office in 2019. This information
has been designated “Law Enforcement Sensitive,” which is meant to restrict its public
release. I have serious concerns about the legality of this surveillance program, and the
materials provided by the DOJ contain troubling information that would justifiably
outrage many Americans and other members of Congress. While I have long defended
the government’s need to protect classified sources and methods, this surveillance
program is not classified and its existence has already been acknowledged by the DOJ in
federal court. The public interest in an informed debate about government surveillance far
outweighs the need to keep this information secret. To that end, I urge you to promptly
clear for public release the material described in Appendix B.

Thank you for your attention to this important matter. If you have any questions about
this request, please contact Chris Soghoian in my office.

Sincerely,

Ron Wyden
United States Senator

CC: Dr. Rahul Gupta, Director of National Drug Control Policy.

DESCRIPTION
Data Analytical Services (DAS) is a service available to High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA)
initiatives (task forces) through a contractual agreement with a telecommunications provider. 1 Under
this agreement, the telecommunications provider furnishes investigators with information and technical
assistance to precisely and accurately identify telephone numbers linked to illegal drug trafficking and
related crimes.

Services provided include the following:

- Determining whether phones associated with international targets of investigation have entered
the United States;
- Linking multiple devices/phone numbers to an identified target;
- Identifying devices that have had SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) cards substituted or
replaced;
- Identifying and deconflicting international telephone numbers associated with targets; and
- Assisting investigators in understanding evolving telecommunications technology and ways in
which that technology can be exploited by criminal organizations.

LEGAL AUTHORITIES
Under the terms of its agreement, the telecommunications provider requires legally compelling
authority to respond to requests for information. That legal authority must comport with applicable
state laws. Before responding to any request for information, the telecommunications provider reviews
the material submitted and ensures that the authority required by the respective state’s law
accompanies the request. If the legal authority is not provided or is insufficient, the telecommunications
provider will not respond to the information request.

ONDCP’S ROLE
The Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has provided funding through the annual HIDTA
discretionary process to support DAS. (Funding details are provided in the table below.) Because DAS is a
service available only to law enforcement undertaking active investigations under legally compelling
authority, ONDCP does not have access to DAS or to the services or information it provides.

Currently, ONDCP awards funding to support DAS to the Houston HIDTA, which engages in the
contractual agreement with the telecommunications provider. Both the Houston HIDTA and the
telecommunications provider undertake routine audits to ensure that the service is used appropriately
and strictly limited to counternarcotics investigations conducted by regional HIDTA initiatives.

1
From 2009 through 2013, this service was known under the title “Hemisphere.”
FUNDING INFORMATION
The table below depicts HIDTA discretionary funding awarded by ONDCP to support DAS.

HIDTA DISCRETIONARY FUNDING

2009 $1,400,000
2010 $1,450,000
2011 $1,000,000
2012 $500,000
2013 *
2014 *
2015 *
2016 *
2017 $300,000
2018 $300,000
2019 $485,000
2020 $485,000
2021 **
2022 $270,000

* From 2013 through 2016, ONDCP did not allocate HIDTA discretionary funding to support DAS;
however, some individual regional HIDTA programs contracted directly with the telecommunications
provider to acquire these services

** In 2021, funds carried over from 2020 supported DAS services.