By Matthew Holloway |
The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s (ONDCP) Hemisphere Project was thrust into the daylight last week in a release responding to a bipartisan letter from Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR). According to a press release from Biggs’ office, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) released unclassified information that was previously redacted from a March 2019 report detailing the use of Administrative Subpoenas to Collect or Exploit Bulk Data by the Drug Enforcement Agency.
Biggs has been calling for transparency on the Hemisphere Project since at least November 2023 when he highlighted the program’s use by former DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith in an interview with Newsmax.
Biggs explained “It’s the feds actually contracting to buy personal data from big telecom companies, anybody who made a call, even if it wasn’t your telecom company. But if you made a switch to somebody who was in that company, they got your data and they were giving it to the federal government.”
He went on to tell Newsmax, “It is so dangerous what is happening now and what Jack Smith’s doing, this is why we wanted to defund him.”
At the time, a bombshell report from WIRED revealed that the Biden White House had provided over $6 million for the program, allowing the targeting of any calls using AT&T infrastructure. As reported by Breitbart at the time, Sen. Wyden expressed “serious concerns about the legality,” of the program.
In a post to X, the Project for Privacy & Surveillance Accountability responding to the 2023 report wrote, “#Hemisphere is larger than a previous @NSAGov program shuttered after continual abuse & declared illegal by 2nd Circuit. Agents were instructed to never discuss Hemisphere in official docs as far back as 2013 – the parallel construction archetype.”
Biggs wrote in his letter as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime and Federal Government Surveillance, “What you failed to disclose in that op-ed is that your office has – for more than a decade – quietly funded another dragnet surveillance program that has swept up information about millions of law-abiding Americans without meaningful Congressional or judicial oversight.”
In his press release last week, Biggs noted, “Last year, the House Oversight Committee considered legislation to reauthorize the ONDCP. The bill included a number of provisions negotiated by Congressman Biggs that were designed to improve Congressional oversight of ONDCP funded programs, and to protect Americans’ privacy. The release of this information underscores the need for similar legislative reforms to be enacted across government programs.
“Additionally, the ONDCP informed Senator Wyden that federal funding for Hemisphere was ended as of September 30, 2024, and the program has been shut down.”
Congressman Biggs and Senator Wyden issued a joint statement saying, “This report contains information that the public has a right to see. The American people demand transparency from their government, and Congress must work to ensure that the federal government is accountable to its citizens. We’re thankful to DOJ OIG for their work to make new information public, and we look forward to further cooperation in the interest of American citizens.”
Matthew Holloway is a senior reporter for AZ Free News. Follow him on X for his latest stories, or email tips to Matthew@azfreenews.com.
