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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.'"
I wonder if anything picked up on a unintentional wiretap is still admissable in court - could provide for a nasty loop hole...
*smash* Sorry about that...you might want to fix your door...
To put the tinfoil hats away, or throw them out. Some want us to believe that the government is capable of all this conspiracy crap.... Hell, they can't even use the toilet by themselves if you look at stories like this one. Carnivore was supposed to be scary... the only real thing scary about it was the shortage of harddrives that it promised to create storing all those email messages... and I KNOW they weren't going to get away with using Exchange to store them!
The government might be ominous, but its run by humans, and they are too busy tripping on their own resume's to do anything truthfully scary. Its only individuals who are left without oversight that can be scary... groups of people.. pfft! Hitler and Mousolini were individuals... groups of people just don't manage to get it together fast enough or hard enough... self regulating so to speak...
Now, if individuals are doing wiretaps... could be different
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Does anyone expect privacy on the phone lines anyway? If you do, and you're up to no good, you're an idiot.
Now that's a fucking lame excuse for breaking my rights.
For all those times they "accidentally intercept" 1-900 sex lines...
"We had reason to believe Ossama Bin Ladin calls this number frequently."
Last time I checked they had these magical things called wiretaps before 2001.
Right. The problem really is that there USED to be judicial oversight. No more. Supporters of PATRIOT claim it's never been abused, thus it's not a problem.
But, you do bring up a point that a lot of folks have been asking- especially after Katrina.
There was advanced warning of a disaster, and there still was a lack of coordination and a delayed response. If TSA and local authorities couldn't get their act together with advanced warning, what are they going to do if we get attacked? And you're exactly right: How is it that these billions of dollars are being spent just to get what we saw these last few weeks?!?
Evil people don't think they're evil. - George Lucas, Making of Ep III
In other news:
Police sometimes arrest the wrong people who haven't committed any crime.
Juries someimte convict the wrong person.
The FBI isn't perfect.
This is not exactly earth-shattering news here, unless you believe the government is some evil,perfect conspiracy out to get you. There's very little news value in this story.
Scuttlemonkey, why'd you have to make that dig about saying oops makes it ok? Nobody would say that, so why'd you have to flamebait like a troll? The editors just get worse and worse.
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.
Why should they tell people their phones were tapped and conversations recorded? I'd bet that the people involved would get vocal about wiretaps.
use of warrants issued by a court that operates in secret under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
They use secret courts so they aren't accountable to the people who pay their salary, the taxpayers.
FalconShould there be a Law?
Show me a man that has never broken the law and I'll show you a man that has never driven a car.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
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?
I get the impression that the FBI looks at everyone as a criminal waiting to happen. They probably keep all the intercepts on file, just like they want to do with records of legal firearm purchases, DNA samples from acquitted persons, and the like.
Stop learning! Only you can prevent esoterrorism.
Do you report yourself when you run a red light ?
When you make a mistake on your taxes in your favor ?
When the cable company is accidentally giving you free porn ?
What would be the actual upshot of the FBI reporting these errors ? We'd have another source of employment for lawyers and another way to waste limited law enforcement resources.
The pursuit of criminal and or investigations is both a legitimate and neccesesary function of the government. The prople that complain most about the government doing its job are the same people that get the most upset when something untoward occurs.
Agent Johnson: Honey, I'm home! By the way, I'm supposed to tell you that your phone was accidently tapped during one of our terrorism investigations. It's all taken care of now though. There is absolutely no trace of your transcripts left. I took care of that myself so you don't worry about it. Oh, and that guy you were talking to about meeting at a hotel while I'm at work next Thursday... He won't be able to make it. He commited suicide.
Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
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.
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
What scares me most are the 38,514 hours of audio backlog to be translated. That's over 4 years worth of audio! "Hey boss! I've got some intel about a bombing in a city... but it already happened 2 years ago..."
Radicode
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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The Cambodians had an evil machine run by groups of people that killed millions. So did Stalin, In the last 100 years think of all the evil that "groups" of people have carried out.
Governments dont have to be efficient, in fact the incompetence is what is scary. Innocent people will get screwed and the guilty will go free. The commies failed because even though they killed a lot of people, it was not necessarily the people they wanted to get. That's what the lack of oversight brings. The reason oversight is frowned upon is so that mistakes can be covered up.
If you are innocent, beware of inefficient groups of people.
Sadly there are those who dont care if there are innocent people getting screwed, as long as it's not them and they feel safe.
It's cheaper to "sacrifice" some innocents than to find out if their punishment is deserved.
Why do you think people support the idea of not finding out whether a non citizen is guilty before locking them up for life in Gitmo?
I'm keeping my tinfoil hat on. Tight.
You forgot the Ark of the Covenant! I'm sure that's in an FBI warehouse too!
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#88575 +(4830)- [X]
...and it's off the cuff remarks like that that are the reason I don't log chats
<Stormrider> I should bomb something
<Stormrider>
<Stormrider> Just in case the FBI ever needs anything on me
<Elzie_Ann> I'm sure they can just get it from someone who DOES log chats.
*** FBI has joined #gamecubecafe
<FBI> We saw it anyway.
*** FBI has quit IRC (Quit: )
I thought that these were rights that were protected by the Constitution in the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th Amendments of the US Constitution? One is supposed to be informed of his crime before investigation can begin. The Writ of Habeas Corpus also applies here; since a crime hasn't been committed, there is no way that they can just listen because someone might commit a crime. Someone might talk about committing murder and how they plan to do it, but no one has the right to listen in on the conversation because one of the parties might conspire to commit murder. The Constitution protects rights of "criminals" by saying that a) to run an investigation a crime must be committed (habeas corupus) b) the accused must be told what his or her crime is (5th amendment) c) the person must be informed by the government with a cause and substantiation for search and seizure (4th amendment) d) the person is free from penalty of self-incrimination (5th amendment) e) the person is entitled to trial by jury (7th amendment and article 3) f) the person is granted the right to a fair punishment that fits his or her crime (8th amendment) g) the person has a right to a trial that quickly follows his or her endictment for the crime, as well as reasonable bail (6th amendment). So, wiretapping and using it in court would violate ALL of these. Since there is no proof of a crime that has been committed, the rest of the claims that would even validate a wiretap are false. If people knew that their phones were being tapped, they would clearly invoke the fifth amendment. This is a clear violation of authority and needs to be stopped. I'm sure a good corporate interest group would actually agree with us on this one.
Analysis of the USA PATRIOT act
Section I, subsection A. Paragraph 5.
Second, FISA allows a secret court to authorize U.S. intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance using each of the four basic mechanisms listed above....The secret court's role here, however, is quite limited: it is not supposed to "second-guess" the government's certifications or representations. (Unsurprisingly, the secret FISA court has only denied one application in its over twenty-year existence.)
Third party information, but the EFF is pretty much the ACLU for digital information. I've seen it other places, but don't have the links anymore.
I read the wire article in the local newspaper and can tell you that the "Court" is a secret court that hands out the permission to do the taps. This is set up under the PATRIOT Act that gives permission for wiretaps based on suspicion that the suspect is a "terrorist".
Most people don't have to worry until they "accidentally" ask for a tap on your phone, e-mail address, and wireless phone. Even a payphone you might just use! The problem here is FBI "error", which makes me think that the court isn't asking enough questions.
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Very simple. Read some history. Read about Hoover's direction of the FBI, McCarthy, COINTELPRO, and REALIZE, that one of the primary roles of the FBI (at least within the past 50 years) has been to trample all over people and freedom in general. Not terrorists, PEOPLE...American citizens...supposedly living in a 'free' country.
You sound like you have something to hide. Please report to the nearest re-education center for your own safety.
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The problem with communism is that Marx, by condoning (or even promoting?) violence as a valid means of achieving communism, put a substantial flaw in the "design"/implementation plans.
That opened a much larger window for the evil and violent sociopaths to get to the top and start running the show.
Otherwise, you might just have the run of the mill sociopaths, who would be like those parasites that don't inflict so much harm to their hosts. If you are fortunate some of those sociopaths might actually choose to be symbiotic.