Report: The Justice Department kept secret records of Americans' foreign calls for more than a decade

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The Justice Department kept a secret database tracking U.S. calls to and from foreign countries for more than a decade, according to a new court filing.

The program began in the 1990s and was shut down in August 2013, sources told The Wall Street Journal. The specific countries recorded in the database aren't specified, nor is the total number of countries.

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Julie Kliegman

Julie Kliegman is a freelance writer based in New York. Her work has appeared in BuzzFeed, Vox, Mental Floss, Paste, the Tampa Bay Times and PolitiFact. Her cats can do somersaults.