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Project Hemisphere is a known service provided by AT&T, which was revealed back in 2013 to supposedly help law enforcement agencies in solving crimes. New documents revealed that this was not the whole story, however, as the telco was actually selling their service in exchange for millions of taxpayer money.
According to documents acquired by The Daily Beast, Hemisphere wasn’t a “partnership,” as it was sold to the public. Rather, it was AT&T offering to violate user rights via warrantless access to private information in exchange for money. What’s worse, the documents also indicate that law enforcement agencies that used the service were made to promise never to reveal Hemisphere’s involvement in the investigation once it went public.
These damaging details are coming out just in time to potentially interrupt the AT&T and Time Warner merger. The deal is being widely criticized right now, with the two running presidential candidates from the major parties also expressing opposition to the plan.
Current laws legally obligate telcos like AT&T to hand over user information if asked by police or federal officials with warrants. However, AT&T went a step too far by actually making a profit out of the arrangement, technology policy analyst at ACLU, Christopher Soghoian said.
“Companies have to give this data to law enforcement upon request, if they have it,” Soghoian explains. “AT&T doesn’t have to data-mine its database to help police come up with new numbers to investigate.”
According to Fight for the Future, a digital rights organization, noted how this development revealed a far more damning spying activity than what was unveiled during the Snowden case, Newsweek reports. The campaign director of the group, Evan Greer notes how bad a data mining tool like Hemisphere is for consumers.
“The for-profit spying program that these documents detail is more terrifying than the illegal NSA surveillance programs that Edward Snowden exposed,” Greer says. “If companies are allowed to operate in this manner without repercussions, our democracy has no future.”
