Privacy
The U.S. government amassed a secret law
enforcement database of Americans’ outbound overseas telephone calls through
administrative subpoenas issued to multiple phone companies for more than a
decade, according to officials and a government affidavit made public Thursday.
The existence of the database was made
known at the order of U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington,
presiding over the case of a U.S.-Iranian dual national who is accused of
unlawfully exporting non-military technology to Iran.
Civil liberties groups and attorneys for
the defendant, Shantia Hassanshahi, called the database a sweeping overreach of
a 1988 provision of the Controlled Substances Act, aimed at drug enforcement.
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