Pay To Have Your Phone Tapped

An anonymous reader writes "The Globe and Mail is running an interesting story over who should carry the cost of wiretapping (registration may be required): 'Canada's police chiefs propose a surcharge of about 25 cents on monthly telephone and Internet bills to cover the cost of tapping into the communications of terrorists and other criminals.'"

Comments

You're going to pay somewhere

[Anonymous Coward]

On your phone bill or through your taxes elsewhere.

Re:You're going to pay somewhere

[Pretzalzz]

The difference of course is that normal taxes are progressive, the richer you are, the more you pay. Whereas with this both rich and poor will be paying the same surcharge so the poor will be hit harder as a percentage of their income.

Hey cool! I hate money anyway.

[theluckyleper]

I've also been looking for someone to kick me in the nuts, for $10/hr. Any takers?

misc phone charges

[commo1]

The phone company (Bell) will eventually win, jacking up prices at this suggestion for the supposed costs involved in the physicaly act of wiretapping. The government can't win, as it has a) the Bell Canada lobby against it and b) the canadian public totally against it. Eventually, these fees will be hidden in the cost of the phone service, per line, with no explanation, except that the fees will be diverted to a waretapping fund.

Not a chance

[Sneftel]

Police say they cannot - and should not - be forced to pay the often hefty costs involved in carrying out court-approved wiretaps and message searches, warning that investigations will suffer if they are expected to pick up the tab.
BS. Law enforcement is publically funded. If it's not funded enough, fine; we the voters will think about giving you more money. But making an end run around the process just because law enforcement in the new millenium is sooo expensive, thereby giving them a cash flow that actually encouragesthem to wiretap frivolously, is not an appropriate solution.

Re:Not a chance

[swillden]

If it's not funded enough, fine; we the voters will think about giving you more money.

The common response to this is that it's way too expensive to take this route, because building all of the wiretapping infrastructure will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. We'd have to double the law enforcement budgets if they had to pay to build this infrastructure themselves.

However, that just raises the question of whether or not wiretapping infrastructure is a good way to spend our law enforcement dollars. All privacy, etc., issues aside, wouldn't we be better off taking the same amount of money and using it to hire more/better cops?

A no-registration version

[theluckyleper]

Here's a version of the article with no registration required.

Errrr

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

Who do you think pays for wiretapping, already? Magical fairies?

User pays system

[syousef]

Only charge those who are being wiretapped. That way they can see the charge in their bill, know they're being tapped, and stop using that phone line to conduct their illegal activies. This ultimately reduces the cost of wire tapping to zero. ;-)

Doublespeak

[3l1za]

I actually think this whole thing is doublespeak.

The company -- Bell Canada -- is doing a nice job of saying that it's concerned for the customer. Doesn't want to increase costs covered by the customer, ...

But what they mean is that (a) they don't want the customer to see this charge as part of their Bell Canada (TM) phone bill; AND (b) they don't want to cover the costs for processing that charge...

But mostly Bell Canada doesn't want to be seen as the SOURCE of this cost. Which is completely understandable AND completely fair. This is not a charge related to upgrading their network or switches or ... it's a charge that is wholly the result of national security concerns. As such, it belongs (a) being regulated by external oversight (not just giving Grue a blank check for some amount that results from charging each customer what seems to be not an overly burdensome amount); and (b) coming from the public in the form of a tax.

Grue doesn't want to have to justify the costs to the public and so that's why he wants to just pass it onto them under the auspices of the phone company, always an easy villian (behemoth, ...).

As every /.'er has said, the public will cover the costs, it's just a question of who has to stick them with the bill. So this story is about all of these people playing musical chairs to avoid getting stuck with delivering the check. Not even covering it. And it's a totally appropriate expenditure in my mind.

At least the phone company says it's willing to split the costs: half coming from LE, half from the phoneco itself; whereas LE just wants to charge everyone a quarter b/c, as Grue says, that seems about right (next breath he says that he hadn't done the analysis on those numbers yet--whatever).

Re:Progressive taxes are worse than regular ones

[SnapShot]

Your powerful message shook the cynicism from my eyes. (cue patriotic music...)

No longer will I assume that lobbiests funnel money to our representatives to buy influence. I now realize that they simply want to be friendly.

No longer shall I think negative thoughts when Dick C. invites energy companies into private meetings to write energy bills. They were probably just playing Risk or Dungeons & Dragons.

No longer will I assume that George was skipping National Guard duty in Texas rather than slogging through the jungles of Vietnam because of his family connections. It was probably just the luck of the draw.

I will recognize that the DMCA was for the benefit of all citizens of our great country and not a cynical manuever to extend Mickey Mouse's value. I feel better knowing that my copyrights are now protected for decades after I die.

I will rejoice that the grassroots efforts of the voters of California managed to unseat a lawfully elected govenor without the influence of outside money. Jeb next, anyone?

From now on the great words of the commie freak Arlo will echo in my ears: "This Land is YOUR Land; This Land if MY Land!" Assuming, of course, that this is considered "fair use" under the current law.