Slashdot Mirror
Feds Want to Tap VoIP
An anonymous reader writes "From the Globe and Mail: The FBI and the U.S. Justice Department have renewed their efforts to wiretap voice conversations carried across the Internet. Federal and local police rely heavily on wiretaps. In 2002, the most recent year for which information is available, police intercepted nearly 2,200,000 conversations with court approval, according to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. Wiretaps for that year cost taxpayers $69.5 million, and approximately 80 per cent were related to drug investigations."
Yes, I know it wouldn't work.
All drugs. Fine, put a warning on the packet, these drugs will kill you, but FFS legalise them!
All the police and courts are doing is creating false scarcity which in a market economy simply pushes up the price, which in turn encourages suppliers. How long has the War On Drugs been going on? Decades. Since before I was born and they're still patently losing.
We are having to deal with the effects of the high price of drugs; Muggings, prostitution, burglaries, car jacking, gang warfare etc.
Just legalise the bloody stuff, regulate the quality and stick some tax on it to pay for rehabilitation.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
with trillons of $ at stake.
The drug cartel can buy what it wants to protect it self, and they do.
The drug cartells have so much cash they can afford to design/build their own sat and launch from china for their own private voice calls under a fake company designed for normal sat calls or even just launch from russia.
On the ground, they have so much cash they can hire the best guns in town (esp after all these unemployed ppl) to make their own high tech russian design encryptos tiny phones. And they do.
THe only way the big cartells can be touched is with the military, even then the US isnt going to go thumping down 5 countries and doing it.
Even after all this, after 30-60 years of drug dealing and using all profits to make legit businesses and reinvesting in markets and whatnot, its estimated up to 20% of the world GDP is derived from drug trafficing, so tearing all those down would just cause a massive collapse, you cant just seize 20% of all businesses in the US and 'resell em' at bargin prices. The drug barons will trash/burn their old businesses down after being seized and even after that would probably hunt down the new owners.
Bottom line, legalize all drugs, (no cant do that, the old fatcats dont like drugs) but then the CIA would loose 1/2 its revenue.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.