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Sorry, Wrong Wiretap
Rick Zeman writes "CNN is covering a little-mentioned Inspector General's report which mentions that the FBI 'sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations' due to various reasons, and that 'The FBI could not say Friday whether people are notified that their conversations were mistakenly intercepted or whether wrongly tapped telephone numbers were deleted from bureau records.'"
thus it's not a problem.
Who's to say it's not being abused, as they work in secrecy? "Just trust us." Not as far as I can throw you!!!
FalconShould there be a Law?
This is slightly more serious I think... at least from the "Slashdot" perspective:
cough cough
The problem really is that there USED to be judicial oversight.
Regular wiretaps must still be approved by the local federal district judge.
National security wiretaps must be approved by the The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. I don't see anywhere where one can get by without any judicial oversight, with the possible exception of short-term emergency taps. As far as I know, those still have to be reviewed by the judiciary.
Governments are often incompetent, yet they are quite capable of "conspiracy crap". See COINTELPRO and ECHELON for example. The fact that conspiracy crap sounds like conspiracy crap, counts in their favour.
The government has established that police can collect evidence against people without a warrant (or other due process) when they "mistakenly" violate the security of people's persons, houses, papers and effects, if the police make the mistake "in good faith". Here in NYC, the cops go to apartment buildings where known offenders (like drug dealers) live, then break in neighbors' doors (on different floors, sometimes), look around, and score a bust without a warrant when they find something. Fourth Amendment? That's as quaint as the Geneva Conventions.
How will Chief Justice Roberts rule on torture of "mistakenly" captured people? The Supreme Court Chief Justice controls the secret FISA court which governs domestic spying. Not to mention the Chief Justice's control of whether foreign rulings have legal standing in American courts. When the government tortures to death Harry Buttle instead of Harry Tuttle, will Mrs. Buttle even be entitled to a refund?
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make install -not war
One day I was talking to a good friend of mine... Mid-sentence we both heard a "beeeeep" sound (probably 800-1000 Hz). After a few seconds of silence from both of us, I asked, "Was that you?" My friend replied "Nooooo..... Was that you?" To which I replied "Noooo..." So we both hung up and called each other again. No beep after that. To this day we joke about it, but we still wonder if we said something that caught "their" attention.
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