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FBI Wiretaps Canceled for Non-Payment
grassy_knoll writes "Apparently, the FBI hasn't been paying the telcos for the wiretaps they've initiated, so the telcos have canceled the wiretaps. From the AP article linked: 'Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.
In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation "was halted due to untimely payment," the audit found.'"
Nelson Muntz: Ha Ha!
There, it's been said. Let's move on.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
The government can spy on the tinest little detail of your life... But, apparently it can't seem to pay it's bills. Even though its the largest consumer of products in the world using public debt funded by social security.. But, according to polticians, thats a problem for the next administration not the current one.
Dick Cheney walks into the Oval Office... "George Herbert Walker Bush! Do you see this phone bill! I guess we are just going to have to turn it off until you can afford to pay it yourself."
I can see it now, bunch of old crusty white dudes sitting around a boardroom "Well, if Congress won't get off their asses and grant us amnesty for warrant-less wiretapping we'll just have to get their attention now won't we"
My Sig Sucks
Film at 11.
When I hear wiretap and FBI in the same phrase, my knee jerk reaction is, especially recently, to attack the FBI. But this is awful. The US does occasionally use wiretaps for their intended purpose and, when they do, it's damned important that they be in-place and reliable. The telecoms are certainly within their rights to refuse service for non-payment, but what kind of a dysfunctional organization can't even pay their phone-bill on time? If my company's phone service was terminated, heads would roll.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Well you could spend more then a trillion dollars on a war but, not pay the wire tap bill on time!
Invading our privacy and violating the Constitution isn't nearly as profitable as one would think.
No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
I like basketball!!1!
The love of money. Source of all things evil throughout the world (that's in the Bible somewhere). And if you're in corporate America, it's also the source of all motivation.
How much is your own privacy worth to you? Can't put a price on it, can you? But it's amazing how fast some people can come up with a dollar amount when it's someone else's privacy. I guess the same can be said about a human life--unfortunately.
Here's something (that is hopefully) a bit enraging to think about. You may be paying taxes to your government that fund an agency to spy on you. Hell, with the NSA wiretapping, the odds are high. How do you like that business model? You're paying for someone to watch you and press charges against you if you do something wrong. What an investment!
And this is all very patriotic of the Telcos, serving their government up until they are past due on payments. All in the name of justice and freedom, indeed! This is genuinely amazing, you just can't even make this stuff up, people.
My work here is dung.
Sounds like a perfect time for a turist attack. Easy to blame it on the fact that we cannot tap into the phone lines.
Eh maybe my tin foil hat isn't on all the way.
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
1. make sure to confuse the need to condemn bad and corrupt law enforcement with the need to condemn all law enforcement, good and bad
2. make sure to confuse the need to question improperly obtained wiretap warrants with the need to question all wiretaps warrants, proper and improper
there, now you are ready to flame on in misunderstanding and miscommunication on the subject of wiretapping. enjoy!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Another puissant argument against "warrantless wiretapping." If these investigations and programs (and agents) are so poorly supervised by the FBI, it's ludicrous to insinuate that the people ought to trust them to do the Right Thing.
If it really was patriotism that motivated they would let billing issues slide. So I guess this proves we should not give them a pass on the illegal ones since they will stop tapping for money, but not for laws which is the ultimate in contempt for law.
Can you hear me now?
As a secular progressive, I'm curious, what is the conservative Republican line on this one?
- Are the phone companies bad for shutting off the FBI and thereby "aidin' terrirsts"?
OR
- Are the phone companies fully justified by free market economics in shutting off a deadbeat government agency that wouldn't even have a budget but stealing it in the form of taxes from hard working Americans?
...this sort of news is what as known as "disinformation".
So it's OK to let your guard down now because those screwups at the FBI can't manage to pay their bills on time. Sorry, but I call bullshit on that one.
If somebody with clout thinks you need to be watched, rest assured that you are being watched.
You're using her as bait, Master!
That's what they want you to think.
Scorta futuere amo!
The Jews.
the phone companies are making helping the government spy on us?
Just asking.
One explanation for the non-payment could be that these (or some of these) wiretaps were made without authorization, and would not have been authorized if a request had been made. Note that I am not arguing the warrant/warrantless issue, rather, I am suggesting that rogue agents within the FBI set up these wiretaps without even following whatever minimal control procedures the FBI has in place.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
Apparently these wiretaps deal with issues that are important enough that the government feels that it needs to set asside our civil rights. Yet these issues and our civil rights are not as important as the phone company being paid on time. Why don't these laws force the phone companies to maintain the wiretaps regardless of when payment is received?
Understanding is a three edged sword. - Ambassador Kosh Naranek, Babylon 5
Human error and incompatible bureaucracies will be the two things preventing 1984 from ever truly coming true...
Instead we'll see Brazil...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I would guess that the Telcos agreed to this purely for profit in the first place, because, seriously, what is the FBI going to do to a coalition of US cooperations. And noww, they aren't even getting paid.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The Bureau had "no comment."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
How soon until we're required to use multiple carriers so the government can negotiate the lowest rate?
"...have you seen this large bill?? Who have you been wiretapping?!"
Gov't: "IDK, my BFF Jill?"
Let me get this straight. Dubya wants us to trust him and his 'boys' to listen in on our private lives, and promises that the information will not be misused. Then they go and show us how responsible they are by 'forgetting' to pay the phone bills? Actually stealing money, and other violations of public trust.
Is it just me, or do we need to start fixing the elections ourselves to ensure that there is a clean sweep through all of the US Government?
Diebold has given us a way to do it, and the powers that be keep insisting that it is not possible... Maybe we should just organize it ourselves?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
1. TELCO agrees to cooperate in illegal wiretaps and get caught.
2. TELCO cuts off some wiretaps due to non-payment.
3. Congressional hearings on #2 diverts attention from #1.
4. ???
5. Profit!
I've never understood the current mania of increased government powers with less accountability. I'm all for increasing the powers of the spooks to spy, just so long as it is balanced by increased accountability and oversight.
Increasing power while decreasing the oversight consistently gives bad results: at best we see this kind of sloppiness on the part of the FBI; at worst we get the kinds of abuses that have blackened America's reputation around the world.
Procrastination Man strikes again!
How about child porn rings? http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2002/03/18/net-porn.htm
You may not like anti-drug laws, and neither do I, but to assume that's all the FBI does is just plain wrong.
With all of *our* tax money that the telcos have sucked up over the years and their long history of unethical business practices, from monopoly to the impossible-to-read bill you receive every month, they can all suck it.
big brother = PWNED
..::ALWAYS : watching::..
that is, until the FBI's BFF, Jill, Finds Out
they say it is often more relevant then the comment above, all we know is its called the Sig!
Sorry, it's like 'drugs' and 'terrorists'. I don't buy for a second that the supposed threat merits the incredible reductions in privacy and rights the current 'cure' requires.
Life isn't precious to this government, so all this crap about 'for the children' really means 'for more governmental power'. I think of all the poor Iraqi children now dead thanks to our governments' actions and I think "American parents need to step up...they've been mooching off of the tax code forever...wI give them money so they can have the children they chose to have...why must I keep giving up freedoms for them too?!"
I just can't get upset about US children being involved in porn, when there are children all over the world being straight up murdered. We have the blood of many many Iraqi children on our hands...let's fix that shit first.
I'd rather be raped than dead.
Blar.
I'm wondering that myself. Of course the constitution says that you can't take private property for public use without just compensation so maybe they right is more important then the other rights.
Well, actually, the right that is being pushed aside does have a reasonable test that can be interpreted differently depending on the moods of the courts where there isn't one about taking private property.
But leaving that alone, it is often difficult to get funding from the government in a timely manor. They usually need approved sources that the money can be spent at or on. Unless it is petty cash, and I mean petty, (less the some arbitrary numbers like $10 or so) all expenditures need to be pre-approved by someone not related to the projects and sometimes depending on the amounts in question, it takes more people to approve the spending.
I put in a bid on a county project and they took one year to approve it when the costs were set for 90 days, then I had to resubmit the bid with new costs and it turned out to be higher then another so they wanted everyone to resubmit. When the job finally went through, the payout was split into three sections because of some oversight. We got 1/3 at the beginning, 1/3 half way through and the remaining 1/3 after it was complete. Now the guy that was supposed to certify our project took a leave of absence for some reasons about a week before the halfway point. I had to wait 3 weeks for him to return to proceed with the rest of it and then it took another week to get paid for the final allotment. Something that could have been finished in about 3 weeks took 2 months in total and the part of the payment that should have been profit took almost 4 months after starting before I actually got it. But how this relates to the article is, I can certainly see where the bureaucracy and red tape alone could hold up the payments past the point the phone companies considered it nonpayment. I'm not entirely sure about how long they would wait but something as simple as filling a form out improperly or even filling the wrong form out in the first place can hold up funds for quite a while. And while this might be the FBI agents fault, it doesn't mean they weren't going to pay as much as they didn't pay soon enough.
Hopefully some of the suggestions will be concerning how payments are approves and training on who and what is paid for without as much scrutiny.
Those tax cuts are starting to pay off for me.
The smartest man in the whole, wide world really don't know that much. - Mose Allison
Brazil! ...ok, I'm done...
Our hearts were entertaining June,
We stood beneath an amber moon,
and softly whispered someday soon!
The thread directly above this one does that and is rated 5.
"Sir, it seems the phone line has been cut!"
"Well, how do you know?"
"Agent Wasnowsky wanted to post on slashdot and his connection timed out..."
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
It could be worse. Back when the FBI was taking down the New York Mafia, the FBI didn't pay the bill on some of their wiretaps. The billing software then billed the other party on the connection, the Mafia guys being wiretapped. It's in Guliani's book about that operation.
Wiretaps are a billable service. See this DoJ document. Search for "Wiretap Fees" in the document. A typical 30-day wiretap costs from $250 to $2600. There are base wiretap fees, monthly maintenance fees, per switch set-up fees, additional switch fees, uninterrupted continuation fees, call-bridging fees, "pinging" fees, extension fees, and fees for activity reports. Prosecutors can't challenge the fees in civil court because the wiretap orders are sealed by a criminal court.
90% of all wiretap requests now involve mobile phones, according to DoJ.
what you want is adversarial oversight. such as when the democrats go at the republicans in public hearings and such. that is true oversight
...but that absolutely destroys the secrecy needed to catch high profile criminal activity
but you really can't get adversarial oversight in a process which by its very nature must be secret. even if you said "ok, i understand the need for secrecy, but there's nothing saying you can't have adversarial oversight done by someone who is not of the process who is sworn to secrecy. a true watchdog"
ok, fine. put the watchdogs in place. happy now? no, you aren't
because if the watchdogs are sworn to secrecy, we'll still have people just like you trumpeting the fact that everything is hush hush and secret and hidden. because the only thing that will truly mollify people with a deficit of trust is if all wiretaps are made widely public
so it's a catch-22. you can have true oversight, but then all secrets are out. or you can have secret wiretaps, but then you wind up trusting powerful people in government who should not be trusted. you, nor i, nor anyone, will be truly satisfied. and frankly, you never SHOULD be satisfied. because some investigations just really need to be hush hush in this world when going after certain really bad dudes
that doesn't mean i trust a**holes in the administration or the government. it's just that given the choice between giving trust to someone i really don't trust at all, and openly blowing a high profile secret investigation, i'd rather begrdugingly trust the government spook
like much of life, it's a choice between the lesser of two evils, and will never be satisfied to everyone's comfort level
in this world there are people who blindly trust those who shouldn't, and those who have a deficit of trust, and give their trust too cautiously. and who's to draw the line where an appropriate level of trust is in a given situation? no one can do that
welcome to life, welcome to uncertainty. you will never ge tthe comfort with these kind of wiretaps you crave. no one will. ever
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I think such a law would violate the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution (involuntary servitude) Anti-Slavery amendment.
BTW, this is the same thing that lawyers that get pulled into being on-the-spot Public Defenders in CIVIL cases use to try to get out of working for free at the Government's behest.
However, I don't give a damn about WHY it's happening. I just know that it IS happening.
You don't think we need to fix what we broke in Iraq?
Death sure is final...no backsies. Are you implying that rape victims would be better off dead? I don't think you are, but your argument is a little odd. I mean, the victim could always choose to off themself, but if you kill them, then there is no choice.
Blar.
I'm not surprised, and "dysfunctional" is the appropriate word to describe most of the US government. (And I would add most large and many small governments.)
OT, but....
When I was in college, I worked between 3 and 5 part time jobs (mostly tech-related). I had the habit of declaring zero deductions, just to simplify my life. When tax time came, I was expecting a nice refund, but instead I had to pay. Why?
The explanation I got was that "to protect the poor" the state did not withhold money from small paychecks... but still expected the taxes be paid at the end of the year. I checked my paystubs, and, sure enough, nothing had been withheld. Luckily I had some money saved to pay taxes with, but what about other semi-employed people? How is this actually supposed to help poor people?
When I was in grad school and dirt poor, my wife had a child on medicaid. When I finally got a real job, we started getting bills for medical services that should have been covered. The hospital had been trying to bill medicaid for over a year, but when they didn't pay, they would send us the bill. If the hospital used the correct (new) address, we would just call them and they would re-bill medicaid. If they used our old address, the bill would get returned, and then sent to collections (hitting our credit). How is medicaid supposed to help people if they don't pay the bills they cover?
Back on topic...
These many years later, I have contracted with federal agencies and private agencies who have government contracts. I avoid directly being paid by the government. They'll pay, but your check will be delayed, and you never know which expenses they'll decide aren't included in the contract.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Oh, goodness gracious. Poor darlings. We all need to get together and hold a bake sale to help 'em out.
The legal system does and always has. It's called Contempt of Court. When a judge issues a warrant for a wiretap, the phone company has to comply or get a staying order from another judge. If they just refuse to cooperate or demand something from the government in return, then the company gets a nice fat fine and whoever was in charge of the delaying tactic can have their ass thrown in jail.
There are two things to be aware of here. The phone company can not charge fees for a court-ordered wiretap. It would undermine the entire legal system and there would be hell to pay. Also, the phone company can not wiretap without a court order. It is against the law. Not only are there federal laws explicitly regulating the phone system to prevent wiretaps without a court order, but they are forbidden by the higher law of the Constitution. Logic leads to the conclusion that either the telephone monopoly is engaged in widespread contempt of court that has gone unpunished, or the American government is illegally spying on its own people and is paying the telephone monopoly for the service with American tax dollars.
My mom always told me to pay all my bills on time or it would look bad on my credit report/score. . .does the FBI have a credit report/score??
I guess a free market DOES solve all problems!
Who would have guessed?
The check is in the mail! Really. It is. No lie. Put it there myself. But you have to restore the wire taps! You will get your money. [ bzzzzzzz...... ]
Did we just lose power? Why did the lights go out? You did pay the power bill didn't you? Damn!
...that 'government doesn't work' and 'government causes more problems than it solves'.
Or, at least, that applies to their government.
If I worked in the FBI, I'd be pissed. An agent go to all the work to collect evidence and get a real warrant for wiretapping and start it up and run the recordings every few days and suddenly, they discover that the wiretap has been cut off and not got anything for two days, and I bet it takes it a week to get back turned on.
Not because of any law, they're used to laws protecting rights and are trained how to work within the system of 'probable cause'. Not because the higher-ups have decided the investigation is a waste of time and the resources are better spent elsewhere, which is very annoying but understandable, and usually has a schedule: Get something by this date or it's over.
No, their investigation is derailed because the people running the FBI, the DOJ, and the rest of the executive branch can't pay their bills on time. Because they're incompetent buffoons. (I am aware Robert Mueller seems rather competent, but I'm assuming the failure was elsewhere...he's surely not in charge of paying bills.)
Ironically, the first word in the FBI motto is 'Fidelity', one meaning of which is 'careful and exact discharge of obligations'. (Hence financial services using it as a name.)
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
The toll-free number to call is 1-800-ALQ-AEDA and ask to speak to
Richard B. Cheney.
Cheers
...cash is STILL king.
FBI shuts down telephone companies for selling drugs to children.
Who in their right mind would screw with the FBI knowing the information they can find/create on you?
I just pictured some head-honcho at the FBI leafing thru the a bill and yelling, "okay, so who made a wiretap to iceland!"
These wiretaps are so important we must throw away the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all privacy laws and then pass legislation making it retroactively legal to do all that and protect the phone companies from law suits and specifically protect Bush from felony prosecution!
This story is obviously all lies. The government would never lie about national security just to protect a president with a 20% approval record and to make the opposition party look week.
As long as you're doing nothing wrong you don't need privacy.
[What the government considers wrong subject to change without notice nor Constitutional restriction. Civil rights void where journalist are prohibited. Contents may settle during extraordinary rendition.]
Fundamentally, if the Feds aren't careful enough with details to pay the phone bills on their wiretap, they aren't careful enough with details to be trusted to handle evidence, and they ought to get spanked hard by their Internal Affairs organization.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Have it sent to an anonymous mail drop, forward copies to the various targets of surveillance and then step back and watch the fun ensue.
Have gnu, will travel.
... what you think it means.
puissant
Pronunciation:
\-snt, -snt\
Function:
adjective
Date:
15th century
: having puissance : powerful
Perhaps you meant pissant?
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Color me confused. Why should the FBI need to pay for wiretaps? Surely the laws can simply be changed so that telcos are not permitted to charge the government a fee for these services?
The FBI has done this in the past.
Did not pay the bill, and instead the Phone CO billed the mobsters who were tapped.
Now the Phone Co is without 'clean hands'
AT&T told the US government how hard it was to produce what number called what number and for how long. The John Draper (CApt Crunch) came along, did an Esquire interview that led to an chat session in front of Congress about DNRs.
And for the rest of you:
Client I have, due to size and lack of ability of the mouth breathers in PA don't pay bills.
Phone Company:
over 3 days - AT&T will not tell me the bill is overdue, or the account number so the wankers in PA can call to pay the bill. Only *AFTER* I threaten to cancel the service and re-establish service on the 4th day does the Phone Company tell me that, yes, there is an overdue bill. 3 days later, service is re-established.
Time Warner:
Bill is 4 months overdue. 1 call. 20 Mins, I get the account number, who to talk to to settle the bill and a name to call back. In under an hour the Internet service is BACK on - all because the staff in PA *ASKED* for service to be turned on - payment to Time Warner would come a week later.
So - who's the bastards? Yes, that's right - the phone company.
From what I understand the costs of becoming CALEA compliant so that the government could do these wiretaps fell mostly on the telcos. They had to establish the facilities for law enforcement to use, do equipment upgrades so they had wiretap capability, and maintain the staff and other resources or pay someone else to do it for them so they could get/stay compliant. They were then told by the FCC that they couldn't levy a national surcharge to pay for these upgrades. This very well could just be their way of jabbing the government for forcing these (presumably) expensive equipment upgrades on them and hurting their bottom line, and then failing to even pay the minimal fee they were supposed to for utilizing that equipment.
If they try it now then any lawyer will simply present this and say "So when it comes to what your company will do, you regard whether or not you're getting paid in a timely fashion to be of far greater importance than whether it's blatantly illegal -- isn't that so?"
Ok, this should put to bed any crazy conspiracy theories, i.e. fake moon landing, loose change, etc. Do all you tinfoil hat people really think that a government that can't even pay it's phone bill on time could really have masterminded things of that magnitude?
what the hell are you talking about?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Should some of those instances of illegal wiretapping ever go to court, this should nicely torpedo any argument by the telcoms that they only whored themselves out to the Bush administration out of a sense of patriotism.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
They don't have to care. They're the phone company.