Slashdot Mirror
Surveillance Is on the Rise, Straining Carriers
Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The number of telephone wiretaps from 2000 to 2004 authorized by state and federal judges increased by 44%, the Wall Street Journal reports, in part because of a rise in terrorism investigations after 9/11, and because the Patriot Act extended surveillance to Internet providers. All the surveillance activity can put a strain on carriers. 'Smaller telecom companies in particular have sought help from outsiders in order to comply with the court-ordered subpoenas, touching off a scramble among third parties to meet the demand for assistance', the WSJ reports, adding, 'Government surveillance has intensified even more heavily overseas, particularly in Europe. Some countries, such as Italy, as well as government and law-enforcement agencies, are able to remotely monitor communications traffic without having to go through the individual service providers. To make it easier for authorities to monitor traffic, some also require registering with identification before buying telephone calling cards or using cybercafes.'"
It has been said before, but welcome to George Orwell's 1984. The thing that gets me is the lip service paid to liberties. If governments are going to go to these lengths then why deal with the pretense of having "freedom"? What is next? Thoughtcrimes?
Why not just tell all communication corporations that they are taking them over and they will now be owned by the government so that surveillance can be conducted on the civilian populace? I'll tell you why..... It would be Revolution! So, our government(s) are slowly, methodically, chipping away at individual freedoms under the guise of "protecting" us. Benjamin Franklin had it right. If we are willing to give away all of this, we do not deserve freedom. The time is NOW to reverse these power grabs for Presidential authority and no oversight. Vote out those representatives and senators that have supported eliminating our rights and take back your lives.
Seriously, corporations are being saddled more and more with the burden of government oversight and expense which ironically, seems to be occurring more and more with Republican administrations. Government is larger now that it has ever been before and the US government is that largest bureaucracy in the history of the planet. There is a price for a government of this size and that is inefficiency and it is being sold to us under an umbrella of fear.
The other side of the coin is government subsidized corporations that are no longer having to compete in a fair and open market place as long as they agree to do the bidding of whoever is currently in power, further destabilizing the ideal of capitalism.
Remember people: The USA is only a couple hundred years old. If we want to stick around, we need to be more careful with how we allow ourselves to be governed. Because if we allow the infrastructure in place to arbitrarily discriminate those who may or may not agree with the overall power structure, then you could find yourself easily under investigation. Take a picture of the wrong thing? Say the wrong thing in an open forum like Slashdot? Support the "wrong" political candidate? Read the "wrong" books? Fail to conform in any way to the overall top 40 culture and you might find yourself on the wrong side of the "firewall" unable to get a job or participate fully in society or possibly worse.
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In David Brin's book "Earth" he talks about a future society with zero privacy. However rather than the Orwellian 1984 version of no privacy, he talks about a world where everyone, from the farmer in the field, to the president of the united states having zero secercy. He debated that with the prolifiation of technology the idea of privacy had become obsolete, and the only way to prevent people with money and power from abusing their ability to spy on the average individual make it so EVERYONE had the capibilities.
I'm not sure if I agree with this thought, but when it comes to privacy, perhaps we've already gone too far, and privacy IS history. Perhaps it is time for total transpancy.
Interestingly enough, I find that from the WSJ, the number of wiretaps last year is only at 1,710 in 2004. 1,710 wiretaps for the year vs a USA 2004 estimated population of 293,656,842 is 0.00058% of the population (assuming one tap per person). Hardly something to gawk at.
... Yet, 2000 was a local low, the lowest since 1997 (difference of 4 taps), so you could just as easily say "the number of wiretaps from 1997 to 2004 are up 43%". The 1999 wiretap count is at 1,350, which means only a 26% increase from 1999, since 2000-2001 (election year) involved a large decrease (-11%) from the previous year. I'll leave this to others to argue the exiting government's preparedness for 9/11/2001.
.... there's a 16% increase in federal wiretaps from 2002-2003, and another +26% increase from 2003-2004, to a current 730 Federal Wiretaps for the year 2004. Wiretaps are going up across the board, but looking back at history, 1993-1994 shows the greatest increase in federal wiretaps, single year up 32% compared to +26% in 2004-2005.
That made me want to find previous years, so I stumbled on a watchdog group, EPIC, which puts the 2000 wiretap count at 1,190 for a +43.6%
From their data, which goes back to 1968, and a few pokes with Excel, we can see that State Wiretaps outnumber Federal by a 3:2 ratio every year back to 1998
The top 3 years of increases in the last twenty are 2001 (25%) 2004 (18%), and 1994 (18%). The wiretaps in 2004 are roughly double the amount in 1991.
If we group by Presidental Office years (since each president tends to change policies and staff when they come into office, group by 4 years), the Bush Administration increase is +14.6% in the first term... impressive, but short of the Clinton Administration's increase of +17.7% in its first term. However, neither president matches the rates of increases in the 80's, with 35% increase by Reagan and 20% increase by Bush Senior.