Federal Judge Delays Thursday Hearing on Making DEA Phone Database Public, EFF Says

A U.S. District Judge in San Francisco is delaying a Thursday hearing in which the Electronic Frontier Foundation was going to urge the federal court to make public a large, decades-old drug enforcement database that contains Americans' telephone metadata (see 1605170006). EFF said in a Wednesday update that the judge issued an order Tuesday asking for "supplemental briefing from the parties" and another hearing date may be set once that briefing is complete. EFF had planned to argue that the government "stop misusing public records law to hide information" about the Hemisphere Project, which was created by the Drug Enforcement Administration, local drug enforcement officials and AT&T.