Human Rights Watch ( HRW) has sued the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration for illegally collecting records of its calls to foreign nations for years.
The lawsuit came after a series of reports and disclosures in public documents disclosed that a surveillance programme , dating back to the 1990s, collected recordings of virtually all international phone calls.
Dinah PoKempner, general counsel at the watchdog group, said that the agency worked with people who faced “life-or-death situations” at times wherein speaking out could make them a target. He added that the persons they communicated with and the timing of the communication were “extraordinarily sensitive” and constituted information that the agency would not turn over to the government “lightly.”
Mark Rumold, the counsel representing the human rights organization, dubbed the DEA’s program yet another example of federal agencies “overreaching” their surveillance authority in secret.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in California, demanded that the surveillance program be declared a violation of the group’s constitutional rights and to purge all records from the programme.
Reports had claimed that the program, aimed at tracking drug traffickers, collected recordings of over one billion calls to over 100 countries from as early as 1992.
