First NSA, now DEA - the scope of snooping expands

According to a report in the NY Times, DEA and local drug enforcement officials have had access to decades of information on phone calls compiled in an AT&T database.

  The Hemisphere Project is a partnership of federal and local drug enforcement with telecom giant AT&T.  Under the Project, AT&T is paid to embed their employees with drug-enforcement units across the country.  When presented with an administrative subpoena (granted by the DEA, not a judge or grand jury), the AT&T embed can access AT&T's internal database and provide the specified information.
  The AT&T internal database contains records of every call that went through an AT&T switch, user info, and location information.  It was originally constructed to facilitate billing, and contains records of all calls going through AT&T switches since 1987.  Training slides for Hemisphere personnel (sent to the Times by an activist) stress the secrecy of the project -

“All requestors are instructed to never refer to Hemisphere in any official document,” one slide says. A search of the Nexis database found no reference to the program in news reports or Congressional hearings. 

The Obama administration has acknowledged the existence of the Hemisphere Project and its extraordinary scale and scope, but suggested that it's not a privacy issue because the database is maintained by AT&T, and not the government.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the 27-slide PowerPoint presentation, evidently updated this year to train AT&T employees for the program, “certainly raises profound privacy concerns.”

“I’d speculate that one reason for the secrecy of the program is that it would be very hard to justify it to the public or the courts,” he said.

AT&T declined comment.

Source -   Drug Agents Use Vast Phone Trove, Eclipsing N.S.A.'s,  New York Times

Google Targets Austin; AT&T too

With plenty of fanfare, Google announced that Austin, TX will be the next test market for its Gigabit data/video network.  Google indicated that it hoped that it will be providing its Gigabit network to consumers starting in 2014.  Google's already built a Gigabit network in Kansas City, offering data speeds three times faster than its nearest major competitor (Verizon) offers in a few markets, and thirteen times faster than AT&T's current fastest standard offering.

   AT&T, who currently provides its U-Verse data/video service in Austin, responded by committing to upgrading their network to Gigabit speeds, as part of their Project VIP broadband expansion efforts - if it can get the same terms and conditions from local authorities that they will offer Google. 

"AT&T is making the point that they could make a lot more investments in many of their communities, absent the regulatory burdens which every community puts on providers," said Raymond James analyst Frank Louthan.

City officials indicated that Google wasn't getting the kinds of special deals in Austin that they had negotiated in Kansas City.  The only Austin "deals" that have been made public call for Google to connect some 100 public facilities to the Gigabit network, as well as offer free low bandwidth (5 Mbs) Internet service (for at least seven years) to anyone paying a one-time construction/connection fee (the amount for Austin residents was yet to be determined, but was $300 in Kansas City).
  There are two other Gigabit speed networks currently providing residential service in the US - one in Chattanooga, TN, the other in the San Francisco Bay area - but those are significantly more expensive (around $250-300 a month, without digital video) than Google's KC rates ($120 a month).  And if AT&T and Verizon start building competitive Gigabit networks, the competition should help keep prices low.

Source -  Google, AT&T target Austin for high-speed internet,  TelecommEngine.com