Number of Federal Wiretaps Rose 71 Percent In 2012

cold fjord writes "Looks like last year was pretty busy. I wonder how many were leaks and media? From the Washington Post: 'The number of wiretaps secured in federal criminal investigations jumped 71 percent in 2012 over the previous year, according to newly released figures. Federal courts authorized 1,354 interception orders for wire, oral and electronic communications, up from 792 the previous year, ... There was a 5 percent increase in state and local use of wiretaps in the same period. ... There is no explanation of why the federal figures increased so much, and it is generally out of line with the number of wiretaps between 1997 and 2009, which averaged about 550 annually. There was also a large number of wiretaps in 2010, when 1,207 were secured. A single wiretap can sweep up thousands of communications. One 30-day local wiretap in California, for instance, generated 185,268 cellular telephone interceptions, of which 12 percent were incriminating, according to the report. The vast majority of the wiretaps in both federal and state cases were obtained as part of drug investigations, and they overwhelmingly were directed at cellphones ... Only 14 court orders were for personal residences. Most jurisdictions limit the period of surveillance to 30 days, but extensions can be obtained.'"

Comments

Seems a bit low...

[kc9jud]

I thought the number was supposed to be around 300 million...

An easy answer...

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There is no explanation of why the federal figures increased so much

Because we can!

--Obama

2012

[the eric conspiracy]

Was an election year.

The War on the War on the War on the War...

[meta-monkey]

Seems like an awful lot of our social (and budget) problems are caused by the over-the-top enforcement methods of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror.

I would suggest a War on The War on Things, but since the War on Drugs only gets us more drug problems and the War on Terror only seems to be making more terrorists, the War on The War on Things will only wind up producing more Wars on Things.

Hence, I propose The War on The War on the War on Things. That should fix it, right?

Crime is down trending

[mrmeval]

Law enforcement has traditionally gone after low hanging fruit. They don't like pissing off the really nasty ones who would kill them, their families and their cat Fluffy. They're fishing for justification to continue to exist. That's what all the terrorist crap is about and why they'll continue to expand domestic crimes as terrorism.

Soon it will be illegal to report on crop failures, droughts, civic unrest, midnight arrests etc. etc. as that will be facilitating terrorism.

Re:Crime is down trending

[PopeRatzo]

They're fishing for justification to continue to exist.

And more important, there is a lot of money to be made.

There are suburbs in Virginia where every single household is involved in the surveillance state. And the sweetest part of the deal is that the money comes entirely off-budget, because of course, if you're going to have a secret program, you know the appropriations to pay for it have to be secret too, because freedom.

I'm not even sure that the US government really has much control over the police state apparatus any more. And don't doubt for a second that the data collected will end up in the hands of private corporations, for god knows what.

Unfortunately, the surveillance regime, the kill lists, the extra-Constitutional domestic spying, the data mining and the "partnering" with private security contractors has now cost the US every bit of moral authority they once had over countries like North Korea.

We can no longer claim any high ground, when you've created an apparatus that the East German secret police could have only dreamed about.