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."

Comments

in another story

[dotpavan]

"We're still seeing a huge trend toward increased surveillance," said Edgar. In another story, a company called fake alibi is spreading its wings.

Hmmmm

[cc-rider-Texas]

This must explain all that heavy breathing when I call those 1-900-XXX numbers.

Not Surprising

[FunWithHeadlines]

"Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received"

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.

Re:Not Surprising

[AlexB892]

I have a few friends in law enforcement, and they tell me the reason such a high percentage of warrants are approved is because it is seen as bad for one's career to request a warrant and be denied. If a detective keeps asking for warrants that aren't justified, supervisors see it as a sign of poor quality police work, so many officers are reluctant to ask a judge for a warrant unless they know they have a nearly air-tight case.

Also, if a large percentage of warrants were denied by the courts, people would spin the statistics to say that police are trying to over-exert their powers by asking for illegal searches. The police don't want to create that image for themselves.

Re:Not Surprising

[demachina]

Yea but Nazi's won the election that brought them to power, though not a clear majority. They consolidated their power largely thanks to winning control of the legislature and passing laws that gradually decimated or outright outlawed all opposition. They used the Reichstag fire to justify many of their greater excesses as the Republican's today use 9/11.

"the nazis were socialist as are most Democrats"

They were Fascists which isn't exactly the same as classic Socialists. The Nazi's created a giant interventionist government but it worked hand in hand with giant corporations and industrialists much like today's Republican party. Wealthy industrialists brought him to power, in fact bankrolled his rise to power, in particular the Thyssen family, and wealthy capitalists don't normally support real socialists. The Thyssen family is interesting because George. W's grandfather Prescott was their banker in America and his bank, Union Banking, was seized for trading with the enemy when war was declared much to the embarrassment of the Bush family. They had extensive financial dealings, along with their wealthy benefactors the Harrimans, with Nazi Germany.

Today's neo con Republicans are also big fans of aggressive warfare, you know unilaterally invading countries who haven't attacked you under false pretenses, like Nazi Germany.

I'm guessing your suggesting today's Republican's are free market conservatives and the antithesis of all this Nazi, Democrat Socialism, well I guess you haven't noticed but the new Republican party has been growing the government, its intrustion in and control of our lives, and its deficit spending at a furious pace, they are just growing it in a way that favors the wealthy and their corporate friends.

I really wish we did have a conservative government that did what all the Republican's have said they were gonna do if they gained power, cut government spending, cut the size of govermment and limit its intrustion in our lives, but today's Republican party is more Fascist than it is conservative. Certainly its velvet gloved, compassionate fascism and nothing close to Germany in the 30's but give it time and one more 9/11 scale attack.

"we still have elections"

So did Germany, they did gain power through elections, laced as they were with Brown shirt intimidation, and they held elections for most of their rise to power, they just used their control of the government to pass laws that marginalized or outright outlawed of all their opposition.

After a stolen presidential election in 2000 and a suspicious election in 2004, remember the exit polls that said one thing and the official results that said another I don't think just having elections proves anything. Unless they are fair and above reproach which America's haven't been since 2000. If they are vulnerable to manipulation they are meaningless.

"free press"

Heh, most people are getting their news from TV networks controlled by a tiny handful of giant corporations. Rupert Murdoch's global empire in particular, is anything but "free", "fair" or
"balanced" and is dominating cable news, maybe you've heard of them, Fox News, they own like a third of the world's media, Viacom, Time/Warner, GE and Disney round out the list, none of which are exactly fans of controversy. Radio is controlled largely by Clearchannel and dominated by right wing extremists. Newspapers are also massively consolidated and simply don't have any traction with most people any more.

So our media has been stampeded in to being anything but free. CBS has been thoroughly spanked for its "liberal bias", FOX's right wing bias is blatant, unchecked and its all angry white men watch. CNN used to balance FOX but since November when they got their new chief and the Republican's swept the elections I barely recognize it, they are pandering to the Christian right so much to try to salvage their ratings. There was a time after the Atlanta shooting they were plugging "The Purpose Driven Life" so

Re:Article text (in case of slashdotting

[Necrobruiser]

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.

Nobody's Perfect

[MoralHazard]

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.

Wiretapping 101 and more

[karvind]

A good introduction to Wiretapping and Outside Plant Security

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?

Re:Does this include...

[Monf]

cell phones are tapped using the EIN number, it gets provisioned to the cop's equipment, kind of a man in the middle thing...

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...

Oh, come on

[wackywendell]

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.