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With a Single Wiretap Order, US Authorities Listened In on 3.3 Million Phone Calls (zdnet.com)
US authorities intercepted and recorded millions of phone calls last year under a single wiretap order, authorized as part of a narcotics investigation, ZDNet's Zack Whittaker reports. From the article: The wiretap order authorized an unknown government agency to carry out real-time intercepts of 3.29 million cell phone conversations over a two-month period at some point during 2016, after the order was applied for in late 2015. The order was signed to help authorities track 26 individuals suspected of involvement with illegal drug and narcotic-related activities in Pennsylvania. The wiretap cost the authorities $335,000 to conduct and led to a dozen arrests. But the authorities noted that the surveillance effort led to no incriminating intercepts, and none of the handful of those arrested have been brought to trial or convicted.
Great success! Flawless victory! The war on drugs is now over!
The drugs won.
But they rot in prison, right? I feel so safe!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I was recently asked to bake a cake for a couple living in a sinful lifestyle...should I bake it for them?
Yes, a great victory for... basically nobody.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
When your law and order is "granted" access to the information that is meant to protect its people from military might and the means of mass destruction and is then used to search, vet and prosecute those very same people you have to wonder what sort of constitutional allowances materialized out of thin air.
Apparently there is no Law of the Land, only Authority. Welcome to your government, one filled with scoundrels, devils, saints, thieves and liars. Welcome to the mirror.
Assholes.
Why are republicans stupid? They are stupid. Why? Is it that the few (billionaires) can make these (many) stupid people do their bidding?
No takers. Wow. Is Slashdot finally getting rational again? Maybe I should wait another 30 minutes.
I'm more impressed with the government's efficiency in this case than annoyed by the privacy violations. It's amazing they did it that cheaply.
can you hear me now ?
Yeah this sounds like US LEO-Logic... Way to go Common core! :-D
It was "last year" and that's not the POTUS we'd wage a never-ending demonization campaign against.
"And they learned nothing."
9065 calls per suspect per day=377 per day, or one call every 15.738 minutes if none of them sleep.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Well why would one want to build a wall on the US-Mexico border if not to better control the drug trade? Only certain people are allowed to collect that money and wield that power.
Have you seen the 2010 movie Machete? Talk about life imitating art.
You say this as though one branch of the government or other isn't tapping every phone call at all times.
I think the true headline is they were forced to admit they USED 3.3 million of the records they already had.
Did they get a wiretap order for a call centre that one of the suspects worked at or something?
This is Slashdot, and there's still some small modicum of people who aren't cubicle bitches here.
So I gotta ask:
Anybody get all up in your business about the contracts you bid on and fulfill?
Why's a bakery different - why are they forced to bake a rainbow wedding cake? Why's nobody bitching about web developers declining to work on porn sites, for example?
Admittedly, I'm all for forcing people to do their jobs. Bake that fucking rainbow cake, Isaac. Serve that fucking beer, Achmed.
But that should go for _every_ job. Get started on that kinkster site, beardo.
When I saw my boss's phone years ago had the ability to convert his phone messages into text, I knew we were officially living out 1984. We knew 10 years ago the phone companies were piping all their communications into a secret government room. You think they were just doing it to fight "turrists"?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
It deals with the issues behind this kind of extreme action. Burner phones won't be private forever... perhaps we should have some methods provided so that they don't have to tap millions. That is, if they are allowed to tap us all... maybe giving means to tap a few of us isn't such a bad trade off?
That's all your privacy is worth now.
...and I don't just mean the US, is to rain the judicial equivalent of an Undertaker choke-slam upon government people who would abuse the law in such a fashion.
Frankly, I think there should be a point in every constitution that someone abusing that which he is tasked to protect faces twice the penalty of someone who wasn't.
McNulty, what the fuck did you do?
Considering NSA's been wiretapping hundreds of millions of lines everyday without a court order this news seems inefficient..
Er... what? Why would the Obama administration specifically target Trump and associates? Trump wasn't even a presidential candidate until Obama had exhausted his own term limit.
We have laws and rights for a reason: to balance cost and effect of interference in people's life.
Pretty sure that this would fall under the unreasonable search clause of the U.S. Constitution
The feebs can do ALL OF THIS, yet cannot arrest a single bankster responsible for the economic meltdown and continuing money laundering or Wells Fargo-like crimes? Oh, I forgot, Eric Holder . . . .(And Robert Swan Mueller III, and James Comey et al. Remember that dude, Swan, who was head of the FRBSF back in 1963 when millions of dollars of securities went missing?)
I'm not saying the post you're replying to is right, but... You mean... in 2016... when this happened?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
No red white and blue donkey, and no mention of Obama in the synopsis even though this was DEMOCRAT president OBAMA.
hmmmmm
Why would I possibly imagine that if it had been under Bush or Trump (or counterfactually a president McCain or Romney) there would have been a red white and blue elephant, and the president's name.
This is the sort of political bias in general journalism that so irritates people on the right.
If Trump does this (far enough into his admin that it's HIS people doing it and not still Obama left-overs doing it), I'm fine with all the "F*** Trump!" postings that are likely to fly.... as long as they are by people who posted "F*** Obama!" when Obama did it. But if you were a "Praise be to Obama!" person as Obama did this stuff, then just sit down and shut up for the next 8 years; you're just a pathetic unprincipled partisan hack.
pccheat
If you believe that you are just as gullible as the media thinks you are!!!!
All that snooping using just one search warrant? That's efficiency.
I for one welcome our snoopy police state overlords.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.