article_snippet.sent: An explosive new report reveals that the United States began secretly tracking phones long before the events of 9/11 or passage of the Patriot Act.
article_snippet.sent: In 1992, a Drug Enforcement Agency operation which has since been discontinued, monitored every telephone call made from the United States to one of the up to 116 countries on their watch list for drug trafficking, including almost every country in both North and South America.
article_snippet.sent: It has been revealed the government began secretly tracking phone calls under a program created for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1992 .
article_snippet.sent: A 1998 request for Sprint to release their call records to the program labeled it as 'one of the most important and effective Federal drug law enforcement initiatives.'
article_snippet.sent: The DEA confirmed this, and The DEA now send subpoenas on a daily basis to telephone companies to obtain records.
article_snippet.sent: In that regard a program created for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1992 was a massive success, allowing agency officials to take down larger members of drug organizations thanks to a system that no longer required larger members of drug organizations to reach out to the phone companies every day, where the could only request individual phone records.
article_snippet.sent: The DEA, who just years earlier were reaching out to phone companies in search of individual records, would now receive phone company records on a daily basis thanks to a request from the Justice Department.
article_snippet.sent: What's more, whereas before the focus was on getting records only of those who were known drug suspects due to time constraints, the agency now received a list of every single phone call from an American phone line to a country on the drug watch list.
highlights_snippet.sent: It has been revealed the government began secretly tracking phone calls under a program created for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1992 .
  
highlights_snippet.sent: a program created for the Drug Enforcement Agency in 1992 forced phone companies to hand over all communication on a daily basis between any Americans calling any 116 watch list countries .
  