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Justice Officials Fear Nation's Biggest Wiretap Operation May Not Be Legal (usatoday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the can-you-hear-me-now? dept.

schwit1 writes with news about a vast wiretapping program and questions about its legality. USA Today reports: "Federal drug agents have built a massive wiretapping operation in the Los Angeles suburbs, secretly intercepting tens of thousands of Americans' phone calls and text messages to monitor drug traffickers across the United States despite objections from Justice Department lawyers who fear the practice may not be legal. Nearly all of that surveillance was authorized by a single state court judge in Riverside County, who last year signed off on almost five times as many wiretaps as any other judge in the United States. The judge's orders allowed investigators — usually from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — to intercept more than 2 million conversations involving 44,000 people, federal court records show."

4 of 118 comments (clear)

  1. Huh? Illegal? by Lead+Butthead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Illegal? When has that ever stopped the government?

    --
    ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
    1. Re:Huh? Illegal? by crackerjack155 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes actually they should be treating them because they are not combatants in the fight between the USA and Taliban. It's also been pretty well established that doctors are supposed to treat anyone regardless of who they are or what side of the fight they are on. It is also well established in international law that it is illegal for any side in a fight to attack a hospital unless that hospital is actively attacking you, regardless of who is in it.

      Someone attacking a known non combatant hospital is a war crime and it doesn't matter if the entire leadership of the Taliban was being treated inside it and you had no other way of getting them all.

      If it is actually true that it happened, that they knew it was a hospital and nobody from in the hospital was actively attacking them, then everyone involved from the pilot to the person giving the order belongs in prison for a long time.

  2. The Words of the former NSA Tech Director by rea1l1 · · Score: 5, Informative

    "If I am anywhere in the USA, and am talking on my cellphone, can the government hear me? And are they recording? And can they use it against me at any time?"

    "Yes." -- Bill Binney, former NSA Tech Director. Worked for NSA 37 years

    also:

    "Bulk surveillance is not necessary to protect anybody. NSA tries to track everyone on the planet. google: the program Treasuremap. OS's are absolutely not safe!" -- Bill Binney, former NSA Tech Director. Worked for NSA 37 years

    https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/...

  3. Meanwhile... by Will_Malverson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...the rest of us fear it may be legal.