Tag Archives: Human Rights Watch

Civil Liberties, Government Accountability, Privacy

Lawsuit Forces DEA to Destroy Millions of Americans’ Phone Calls

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In December, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Human Rights Watch celebrated a victory after their lawsuit against the Drug Enforcement Administration led to the conclusion of a program monitoring Americans’ phone calls overseas. The DEA also told the court that a database storing millions of Americans’ collected phone records has been destroyed.

The EFF and Human Rights Watch filed suit in April after USA Today reported that the DEA had been secretly and illegally collecting billions of records from phone calls placed to hundreds of foreign nations. After an 8 month battle, HRW agreed to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit after the U.S. government assured the organization that the mass collection of data had ceased and the only database with billions of phone records had been purged. The DEA made the promise under penalty of perjury.

A federal judge previously forced the government to respond to questions from HRW regarding the data collection program. The government attempted to convince the judge that there was no reason to rule on the legality of the program since it had already ended and the data had been deleted.

New details about the program were released through the government’s discovery responses. The government’s responses show that the DEA’s database was allegedly only searched when the government had “reasonable articulable suspicion” that the number was associated with an ongoing criminal investigation.

The DEA also says that call records older than two years were regularly deleted and the program reportedly went “off-line” in August 2013. As of January 2015, the DEA claims that the bulk database had been deleted, including any temporary files.

Despite the destruction of this single database, the U.S. government continues to monitor the activity of innocent Americans through a host of other programs and agencies.

As the EFF notes, “the government still retains some illegally collected records, and they’ve admitted as much.” This data collection includes gathering of phone records by the NSA under Section 702 of the FAA and under EO 12,333. Still, the EFF sees the outcome of the lawsuit as a win for privacy.

“Nevertheless, the end of the NSA’s domestic bulk collection and now the confirmed end of the DEA’s program represents a significant step forward in curtailing some of these abuses.”

What are your thoughts? Do you believe the DEA has stopped monitoring calls to foreign nations? Leave your thoughts below.

International, Politics, US

ACLU, Human Rights Watch Call for Criminal Investigation into CIA Torture Tactics

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After the US Senate Intelligence Committee released its exhaustive report on the torture tactics used by the Central Intelligence Agency under its post-9/11 enhanced interrogation program, Americans were shocked to discover that intelligence agents entrusted with protecting the nation brutalized detainees through harsh measures like rectal feeding, forced sleep deprivation, and death threats. Detainees suffered sexual abuse, and one died of hypothermia. Suspects were waterboarded repeatedly. After reading the long list of stomach-churning tactics, many Americans were left feeling like, in attempting to defeat the terrorists after 9/11, the nation lost its way and misplaced its rights-respecting, constitutional traditions.

In light of these and other revelations, Reuters is reporting that two civil rights groups, Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union, are calling for the United States Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor to launch a criminal probe into the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. The civil rights advocates issued a letter to the DOJ, warning that failing to press criminal charges could set a dangerous precedent, which said, “We believe the failure to conduct a comprehensive criminal investigation would contribute to the notion that torture remains a permissible policy option for future administrations; undermine the ability of the United States to advocate for human rights abroad; and compromise Americans’ faith in the rule of law at home.” Both groups believe that the new revelations exposed in the torture report justify a fresh look at the CIA’s tactics.

A BenSwann.com report by Rachel Blevins noted that the group Physicians for Human Rights said that medical professionals who assisted CIA agents with tactics like rectal feeding and hydration might have committed war crimes. Reuters notes that United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism Ben Emmerson said that US authorities responsible for the program should face criminal charges. “The US Attorney General is under a legal duty to bring criminal charges against those responsible,” said Emmerson in a statement on the issue. He continued, “It is now time to take action. The individuals responsible for the criminal conspiracy revealed in today’s report must be brought to justice, and must face criminal penalties commensurate with the gravity of their crimes.”

Officials with the Obama administration say that they have no intention of conducting further investigations into whether crimes were committed under the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program. Marc Raimondi, a spokesperson for the Department of Justice, said that government officials have already carried out two criminal investigations but have failed to find sufficient evidence justifying charges against any specific individuals. Raimondi claims that investigators already knew about the information from the Senate torture report when they conducted the prior investigations and that the revelation of those details to the public does not itself warrant reopening the criminal probe.