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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
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.
Invading our privacy and violating the Constitution isn't nearly as profitable as one would think.
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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.
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!
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.
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?
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?
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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!
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.
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.
...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?