DoJ Collected International Phone Calls

A new court filing reveals that the Justice Department kept a secret database of Americans’ calls to and from foreign countries for more than 10 years. The database came to light in the case of a man accused of conspiring to unlawfully export electronic goods to Iran. In the filing issued Thursday, a Drug Enforcement Administration official told The Wall Street Journal that the agency and Justice Department use administrative subpoenas—not federal court orders—to collect metadata from calls to and from foreign countries “that were determined to have a demonstrated nexus to international drug trafficking and related criminal activities.” The program was started in the 1990s and was shut down in August 2013.