Slashdot Mirror
Wiretap Requests From Federal and State Authorities Fell 14% In 2011
coondoggie writes "Federal and state court orders approving the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications dropped 14% in 2011, compared to the number reported in 2010. According to a report issued by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts a total of 2,732 wiretap applications were authorized in 2011 by federal and state courts, with 792 applications by federal authorities and 1,940 applications by 25 states that provide reports. The reduction in wiretaps resulted primarily from a drop in applications for intercepts in narcotics offenses, the report noted."
Only that the ones done legally have dropped. I'm sure the total amount of wiretapping has gone up.
Why muck around with asking for permission when the phone companies are more than happy to preinstall malware for you and be very cooperative as long as you don't mess with their business?
Why would you go through the work of getting authorization when you can just call the person a "terrorist" and tap their phones without a warrant?
Indeed, only the ones done legally, and that the Office learns about, have dropped.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Admitted wiretaps have dropped.
But not the other kind
The cynical side in me says: Thanks to the Internet, everyone (not just law enforcement) now has wiretap capabilities far far beyond what they could do just 10-20 years ago. ANYONE can now track anything beyond their wildest dreams. Wiretaps are going the way of brick-and-mortar store, print shops, and rotary dial telephones.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008 clearly specifies that an properly adjudicated, individualized warrant from a court is required to collect, process, analyze, store, or disseminate the content of the communications of a US Person. While it seems to be common belief that you can just "call someone a terrorist and tap their phones," this is in fact false.
If you think the government will just ignore the law and do whatever it wants anyway, then any discussion of the law is moot.
Is this just because criminals are now using Internet services, and the service operators are just cooperating with law enforcement and providing a loophole in the wiretap process?
Palm trees and 8
Did they do it less, or stop asking for permission?
Question everything
That's the sort of accusation that requires proof.
They only need to ask for one wiretap that covers everyone (well, a "different" 99%, but...)
rewriting history since 2109
I thought the whole point of wiretapping was to catch dangerous criminals like drug lords. With this 14% reduction, does that mean they are abandoning crime as an excuse and just wiretapping run-of-the-mill citizens now?
Bingo, its all in how you want to twist the numbers.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Wow! And the new NSA data center that's-so-big-the-town-they're-building-it-in-had-to-expand-its-boundaries in Utah isn't even online yet! Just imagine how infrequently they'll need to bother the courts after it opens next year. Eventually judges may be able to go back to their original mission of hearing cases, unmolested by the petty need to approve wiretaps.
And when they've finished tapping everyone, the requests for new taps will drop to nearly zero!
The NSA can legally wiretap anyone without a warrant as long as they make up a reasonable story for why they were wiretapping that person (they have Al Quida on speeddial! [because we planted it there]), and then share it with the FBI.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy
The linked article states: "3,547 persons had been arrested and 465 persons convicted". Is there anyway to figure out what these people were arrested/convicted for? I think Americans would be a hair more understanding if the types of crimes where all related to national security, but it states 85% drug related, I'm guessing bigwigs? so 15% everything else, including national security. It's such a gross break of privacy for a sector of crimes that shouldn't be at the top of America's issues.
Wiretaps are notorious for being needle in the haystack type of operations. Instead the police have to use human capital as they did in the past before widespread and easy wiretap became commonplace.
from the article:
Wiretap applications in California, New York, and New Jersey accounted for 62% of all applications approved by state judges.
seriously what the fuck is wrong with these three states keep on re-appearing on lists as "most unfree fascist shitholes" from various sources time and time again
That hardly means wiretaps in general. For all I know, they're just emboldened to the point of not bothering with red tape. Where I worked (ex telecom engineer), the feds weren't obliged to present any special documents. The services I managed had a simple URL and a simple login/password where the government could login and look at customer data at any time.
Some time ago some sensible folks pointed out that there is no such thing as "cyber crime" just "crime". For the very same reasons, there really is no such thing as "your rights online", just "your rights" and I'd like to remind everyone that the concept of "rights" is not the same everywhere.
Well being the dictator of cornfields isn't much fun.
I believe asymetric encryption is broken. The NSA has the ability to factor very large semi primes. This would render PGP, RSA, etc vulnerable.Adittionally PRNG don't start with an entirly random seed. Side channel attacks likely makes nearly all encryption over the wire less useful.
15TW = 15,000 Nuclear Reactors. (Approx. one accident a month.)
Couldn't agree more! The number of actual wiretaps has probably doubled, they just "forgot" to request permission for the new ones, plus 14% of the normal ones.
Application has reported a 'Not My Fault' in module KRNL.EXE in line 0200:103F