The New York Times revealed on September 1 that the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)  — the same folks who brought us ads about marijuana users eating their own fists and other reefer madness messages — has secretly run a program that provides vast access to phone data records spanning a 26 year period. The program offers information and cooperation to the Drug Enforcement Administration and to other federal law enforcement agencies. According to the Times, "The government pays AT&T to place its employees in drug-fighting units around the country. Those employees sit alongside Drug Enforcement Administration agents and local detectives and supply them with the phone data from as far back as 1987." 