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U.S. Wiretapping Surges 19%
linuxwrangler writes "Court authorized wiretaps in the U.S. surged 19% in 2004 to 1,710. Court orders relating to terror-related investigations are not included in the wiretap statistics and those warrants reached a record 1,754 last year. Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received."
1. wire tap payphones 2. find out where my nigerian friend hid the money 3. ...
4. profit!
There is no sig
"We're still seeing a huge trend toward increased surveillance," said Edgar. In another story, a company called fake alibi is spreading its wings.
This must explain all that heavy breathing when I call those 1-900-XXX numbers.
If you give a liberal an enema, he'll turn transparent.
You must understand... its just like a parent listening on their kid, to find out what trouble they are getting in... Only mom is a guy in a suit getting paid to listen to your phone sex.
This signature is part of a balanced post.
This makes a certain sense. Law enforcement, both police and judges, must feel they are on the same side and under siege by the forces of crime. After all, that's all they see and work with every day. So just as units of soldiers bond and stand up for each other, I imagine it must be tempting for judges and police to bond, or at least feel they are both working the same job from different angles. So they are probably predisposed to think the police know what they are doing when they ask for a wire-tap. Most of the time, they are probably right.
But yeah, it sure does allow the slip-ups (and the occasional outright corruption) to get through mostly unchallenged. That's the downside, and a good reminder why a citizen should never give their governing structure any kind of power without realizing they will use that power early and often and repeatedly, and when someone becomes corrupt it will get used in a corrupted manner. And with very little in the way of real checks and balances in a practical sense.
I'd hardly call that a 'surge." More like a abrupt rise. For me, a surge implies that it is an unstoppable force. 19% is not too awe-inspiring. Its like saying, oh my god.. Slashdot trolls increase by 19%!!
What is your penile percentile?
Can they 'tap' a cell phone?
they don't have to. all they have to do is listen. hence, few criminals use cell phones for communications which they'd prefer remain confidential.
........
or so i've....heard......:-/
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
Some 1,507 wiretaps -- or about ten out of every nine -- targeted portable devices, such as cell phones and pagers.
That's about 111%. Nice work with the numbers there.
"I planned within my means and got a fixed rate mortgage, so where's MY bailout?" -cafepress
Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received.
This is a little harsh, I think. First of all, the judge isn't saying "I believe that the wiretap target is guilty, therefore I authorize the wiretap." You don't have to be presumed guilty for a warrant to be necessary--there just has to be some indication that you may be guilty, the purpose of the warrant being to find out for sure.
Second of all, the system admits that it isn't perfect because human judgement has flaws, and attempts to balance individual rights against the need for effective law enforcement. The US Supreme Court has allowed an exception to search and seizure rules called the "good faith" exception. Basically, the doctrine states that if a law enforcement officer asks for a warrant or executes a search based on a warrant, and it's later shown that the warrant was invalid (shouldn't have been issued, information was bad, whatever), the SEARCH isn't necessarily invalid. As long as the officers involved made an honest mistake, the courts say that they're allowed to use the evidence to prosecute.
Why's this relevant? Because it shows that the point of the warrant-granting process is to check abusive behavior by law enforcement. It does its best to prevent honest, innocent people from being hassled, but it's not meant to try a case before the evidence is collected!
It seems likely, then, that in a properly-functioning system, nearly all warrant requests will be granted. Since officers know that someone is watching and second-guessing their warrant requests, they're not likely to try to slip bullshit pretenses in. The officers know the rules in advance, and probably won't bother trying to get a warrant unless they're pretty sure it's going to be successful.
It's the same reason why District Attorneys, nationwide, have a better-than 95% average conviction rate for cases brought to trial. If they think the case isn't going to stick, they won't try it.
If you want real privacy, use SpeakFreely with your own choice of encryption library.
You would think with nearly 2000 requests, at least ONE might be found without merit, no?
I don't usually wear a tinfoil hat, but that scares me.
Our old story on VoIP Wiretapping
Interestingly in U.S., there are serious legal restrictions on the use of wiretaps by police agencies. The Supreme Court has consistently held that wiretaps qualify as searches under the Fourth Amendment.
Article on related topic of Open Internet Wiretapping: Carnivore
IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) policy on wiretapping which says: The IETF restates its strongly held belief, stated at greater length in [RFC 1984], that both commercial development of the Internet and adequate privacy for its users against illegal intrusion requires the wide availability of strong cryptographic technology.
Another issue: Is Dialing Into a Conference Call an Interception?
Real patriots have their phone lines wiretapped 24/7!
I find it hard to believe that these are just "rubberstamps" seeing aswithout any concrete evidence to justify the wiretap, any evidence they would gather from one or as a direct result from one would be not be admitted as evidence due to that whole 4th Amendment thingy.
Plus the article gives a plausible technological reason the increase given that it takes more stuff these days to nail people. Can't exactly bust someone plotting over blackberry, etc through pre-blackberry techniues.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
Of course not! Feel free to keep using your cell phone for drug deals and terrorist chatter, Valiss...
Or should I say, Bin Laden! Thought you could hide behind a high Slashdot UID, did ya?
Seriously, though, cellular "wire" taps are trivial. They can usually go through the carrier, or they can use receiving equipment if they're in the same cell to query the cell tower and intercept you there.
Since the advent of digital cellular, though, you need more equipment and expertise needed to tap a cellphone. So the good news is that you don't really have to worry about anyone besides law enforcement listening in, unless your outside a digital service area and your phone fails over to analog.
I've had moments in Brooklyn Heights, in NYC (which is notorious for bad cellular reception) where I'm on the phone and I can suddenly hear the conversation of a person a block away on my phone. When I look down, sure enough, it's on analog.
So be careful out there, kids.
Of course wiretaps went up..
;-)
It was an election year, after all.
not that i would know or anything, I think I saw the lone gunmen (the 3 geeks on X-Files) do it in an episode...
they can customize the dial error messages you receive, they can route your cell-phone web browser through whatever proxy server they want, they can shut off your cell phone to piss you off, reprovision on the fly, etc... The hardest thing is to find your physical location, and thats using good old triangulation if you turn off the location awareness thingie (which isn't actually turned off, just restricts it to "Law Enforcement Personnel" or their close personal friends), and yes, they can create a hidden three-way call to a third party to listen in, or store the conversations digitally...
Anyways, the point is that cell phones are tapped with computers, after it the signal hits the tower and gets on the land lines, not with radio receivers...
Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.
Can you? I've done it ;) I worked on a particular government project which needed to be able to listen in to a wide range of frequencies, scanning for signals at a very high rate and then being able to tune into them. Consequently, we had to test it on all sorts of signals to make sure that it worked. Cell phone signals stick out like sore thumbs - nice, clean spikes. If I'm remembering correctly, at the time, we were only able to listen in to the analog signals, and you'd only get half of the conversation at a time (you're either listening to the phone or the tower, not both).
There's 300 million people in the US, and there were less than 2000 wiretaps. That's one wiretap per 150,000 people...that seems mighty low to me, especially since I live in a drug-infested suburban town with a whopping 5,000 people which therefore had a 1 in 30 chance of ANY wiretapping at all in the past year, as I would say that my town is no more likely to have a wiretapping than the average, but I could certainly imagine one being needed. It seems to me like saying, "Holy shit! Wiretappings have risen from 10 to 100 in the US in the past year! that's a 900% increase!" It's too small for an increase of any size to make much difference.
Yes. The wireless signal goes to a nearby basestation, where it enters the regular phone network. Tapping is pretty much as easy as for a regular phone. If they want to do more sophisticated things, like data tapping, or tapping nextel style walkie talkie features, they have to get the assistance of the service provider, but it is still not hard. Where there is data, there is a way.
George Bush... is that you?
Did you really read it?
Huh?
Even the first paragraph?See the last sentence? That would be what we call a "word problem".
It goes something like this:
Every WMD in Iraq was destroyed, how many are left?
a) none of them
b) all of them
c) I'm invading anyway
d) all the above
--Phillip
Can you say BIRTH TAX
And even if you do not worry about your network provider and authorities listening, you should be aware that the GSM encryption was deliberately designed to be weak, and that it has been broken.
Of course they can.
Apart from your voice and data traffic, the 'mobile' part of your connection also keeps track of the signal strength from the nearest cell phone towers. This allows the operator to give an estimate of your location, the accuracy of which is dependent upon the number of towers within range.
Since each cell phone tower is going support hundreds of phone calls simultaneously, this requires a high-speed digital data link to the nearest trunk exchange, where the call can be routed to other telephone networks, as well as the operators accounting system.
Since the data is digital it can be multiplexed or diverted and split off in any direction. Particularly useful for voice-mail, three way calling and group conferences.
Your mobile phone is always in communication with the nearest cell phone tower, even if it isn't actively handling a telephone call.
There have been several cases where a suspect had been incriminated by the times and locations that a mobile phone has been used and switched off.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
"...surged 19% in 2004 to 1,710."
/ us.html#Comm
1710 taps , how many phone lines in the US?
Telephones - main lines in use: 181,599,900
Telephones - mobile cellular: 158.722 million
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
340 million lines in the US.
Should have been from the uncle-sam-isn't-listening to many dept.
Here come the slide to Nazi Germany and whatnot posts.
"Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received."
Or maybe Judges demanded a crapload of extra evidence for the tiny number of wire taps approved.
"Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received."
There is no mention in the article about percentages of wiretap requests approved, so why make a baseless statement like this. Instead maybe the reason for the increase is because, as the article says:
"Drug dealers now are making use not just of traditional cell phones but a variety of devices, including Blackberries, pagers, and Nextels. So most likely these increased wiretap numbers simply reflect law enforcement's continuing efforts to keep pace with both the tactics and technology that is being used on the street," said Barr.
Vote for Pedro
Thing is, I'm not scared by this article. There are 290 million people living in the United States, and a 19% increase amounts to around 273 extra wiretaps across the country. Not scary. In fact, I'm surprised that the number is 10 times larger, given that it appears to be a small fraction of the number of crimes investigated every year that should have been wiretapped.
Furthermore, it may interest you to know that the legal standard for getting a wiretap is rather high (which is why there are so few of them).
See United States Telecom Assoc. v. FCC . So how, you ask, is it that there were no wiretap requests turned down if the standard is so high, and it's used relatively rarely?Simple. It's not like the police officers are going "Hey Judge, we need a wire-tap on this guy Frank 'cuz I think he's doing "crimes" -- and we need it yesterday!" What actually happens is the police officer goes to government lawyer. The government lawyer -- who does this all the time -- then tells the police officer 9 times out of 10 that they haven't met the standard. Even that 1 time out of 10, the government lawyer approaches the judge ex parte (i.e. not in a court proceeding) which allows the judge to indicate through subtle nods and grunts that the wiretap request is half-cooked, and to come back later. So you just don't get denied applications. By the way -- denied applications are the last thing the police want, because then -- dollars to donuts (hehe) when it comes time to the criminal trial, the wiretap evidence will be considered inadmissible even if the police eventually did get their wiretap.
What Devlin Barrett, the reporter who wrote the article, should have mentioned, is how many wiretap requests were officially turned down over the last few years. But the reporter omitted this information, most likely because very few requests have been officially denied within the last decade. So the alarmist language used in the article makes it, IMHO, FUD.
Regards,
Moiche
This was informative? How about funny? Even funnier were those who questioned the math.
RTFA not the parent.
Who cares? Pre-paid cell phones are literally disposable, one-use toys to the bad guys. You don't even need a fake ID, just cash, and not all that much at that. How can they tap your phone when you use a different phone for each call? The best they could do is tap all the pre-paid phones and listen to every conversation out there -- good luck with that! (wanna bet the NSA is big into voice recognition?)
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
... or they're using the cryptophone...
If I understand it correctly, that telephone uses a sort of ssh-like connection for normal calls... sounds pretty cool :)
- Leon Mergen
http://www.solatis.com