U.S. Wiretapping Surges 19% 274
linuxwrangler writes "Court authorized wiretaps in the U.S. surged 19% in 2004 to 1,710. Court orders relating to terror-related investigations are not included in the wiretap statistics and those warrants reached a record 1,754 last year. Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received."
encryption (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody's Perfect (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a little harsh, I think. First of all, the judge isn't saying "I believe that the wiretap target is guilty, therefore I authorize the wiretap." You don't have to be presumed guilty for a warrant to be necessary--there just has to be some indication that you may be guilty, the purpose of the warrant being to find out for sure.
Second of all, the system admits that it isn't perfect because human judgement has flaws, and attempts to balance individual rights against the need for effective law enforcement. The US Supreme Court has allowed an exception to search and seizure rules called the "good faith" exception. Basically, the doctrine states that if a law enforcement officer asks for a warrant or executes a search based on a warrant, and it's later shown that the warrant was invalid (shouldn't have been issued, information was bad, whatever), the SEARCH isn't necessarily invalid. As long as the officers involved made an honest mistake, the courts say that they're allowed to use the evidence to prosecute.
Why's this relevant? Because it shows that the point of the warrant-granting process is to check abusive behavior by law enforcement. It does its best to prevent honest, innocent people from being hassled, but it's not meant to try a case before the evidence is collected!
It seems likely, then, that in a properly-functioning system, nearly all warrant requests will be granted. Since officers know that someone is watching and second-guessing their warrant requests, they're not likely to try to slip bullshit pretenses in. The officers know the rules in advance, and probably won't bother trying to get a warrant unless they're pretty sure it's going to be successful.
It's the same reason why District Attorneys, nationwide, have a better-than 95% average conviction rate for cases brought to trial. If they think the case isn't going to stick, they won't try it.
Sample conversation with judge (Score:1, Insightful)
Hmm, no, I'm not sure.
Erm, it's terrorism related.
Oh, shit, well, I guess I'd better.
be intresting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
That should never happen. The courts are theoretically independent. They are a government agency created by the legislature, but are not supposed to be on the side of anyone. They are an independent and neutral arbiter of the law (although you might not know that with the recent calls of "judical activism" when a judge doesn't judge the way someone wants them to)
When the judiciary essentially pairs up with the executive branch, you've essentially gotten the judge and the executioner on the same side. It then follows that you are no longer assumed to be innocent. If the judges and the police are "on the same side" concepts like probable cause go out the window (see police state).
Silly (Score:5, Insightful)
It was an election year, after all.
Re:This isn't surprising... (Score:1, Insightful)
Some people will blaim Bush for anything . . .
Re:Not Surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
They are on the same side of the law, but are completely different branches of government. In this case, the judicial branch is supposed to be a check on the executive branch, but it is hard to argue that they are doing their job with a 100% approval rate. There are very, very few private companies that do everything right, much less government agencies.
What difference? (Score:1, Insightful)
So what? The use of the Patriot Act has been shown to be used in terrorist activity almost not at all! Instead, it has been used against drug dealers, tax evaders and even Congressmen from Texas, but NOT against terrorists!
Note that this is the exact opposite of what they said when lobbying for the Patriot Act in the first place. Dramatic proof that our forefathers knew exactly what they were doing when they founded this country. You cannot trust government!
Re:Does this include... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not Surprising (Score:5, Insightful)
So ya, not really supprising that most warrant applications are granted. The police don't want to apply unless they think there's a good chance of getting it, and the burden they need to meet isn't all that high. If someone credible testifies "Ya, I saw that gun at his house on the table." that's probably enough for probable cause.
Re:enjoy it while it lasts (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that, and there may not be a huge demand for it. Most people don't have much worth hiding. I mean, in principle I don't want the cops listening in on my phone conversations... but really who wants to listen to my mother tell me what the weather is like where she's at and complain about how lousy her week was?
This will never happen... but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
But yeah, it sure does allow the slip-ups (and the occasional outright corruption) to get through mostly unchallenged. That's the downside, and a good reminder why a citizen should never give their governing structure any kind of power without realizing they will use that power early and often and repeatedly, and when someone becomes corrupt it will get used in a corrupted manner. And with very little in the way of real checks and balances in a practical sense.
Maybe we need a law that says judges who approve 80%+ of the requests for warrents they recieve in a year, must have those cases reviewed to see if they all panned out.
If a judge approves a wire tap, and only 60% or less of those warrents lead to convictions (not just an arrest), then we have a problem. A Judge needs probable cause, and for me probable cause means the police already has strong evidence the person is going to break a crime.
There is one website, I will not mention it here, it is used by police officers (if you google, you will find). They talk about everything. Some forums are public forums (anyone who registers can read and post), and other forums are hidden, you must be part of a group to post. I saw that hidden area once and I was shocked to read some of the "tricks" police use to get warrents, to harrass people, and to stick together. For example, if a police officer thinks a judge will be resistant to approving a warrent, they will hit up some neighborhood scum to say "yeah... he is about to sell drugs from his house this weekend". And one other dirty trick. Say a police officer has a real and valid reason to believe you have a stolen car in your garage. This is a true story by the way from that forum. The police officer asked for advice with getting a warrent, because he wanted it all legal. One of the other experianced police officers told him to include drugs on the warrent, because if he does not, he can only search the garage and not desks or cabinets. One of the requirements of a warrent is you can only search for what you're looking for. So if he gets a warrent for a stolen car, and finds drugs hidden in the silverware cabinet in the house, they can't arrest the person for the drugs (unless the person is an idiot and lets them search, or gets a crappy public defender).
Re:A Little Bit of Paranoia Mixed In? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's true...if the courts haven't frozen a persons assets first. Then, the person can't pay an attorney to fight with the 4th amendment. Well, unless that person has A LOT of cash stashed somewhere.
In Michigan, it's often the case that a person being accused of say 'manufacturing drugs' (1 pot plant will do even on a 40 acre property) will end up with all valuble assets seized before any trial. Then, when the person is convicted, those assets are split between law enforcement agencies.
This really sucks because the defendant can't afford a decent attorney because his assets are all locked up. (Drugs may be bad, but not letting a person hire a competent attorney to prove they weren't the person who did it is worse).
I've sat in for a few trials. And, it's been my extreme discomfort twice to have seen a judge say 'the 4th doesn't apply, your house wasn't large enough and the police were just protecting themselves and the defendant by searching for danger in the immediate vicinity'.
If the 4th won't protect those in Michigan from judges like that, how will it help protect against unnesessary wiretaps?
The Horrors (Score:3, Insightful)
1710 taps , how many phone lines in the US?
Telephones - main lines in use: 181,599,900
Telephones - mobile cellular: 158.722 million
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos
340 million lines in the US.
Should have been from the uncle-sam-isn't-listening to many dept.
Here come the slide to Nazi Germany and whatnot posts.
"Apparently judges have found that law enforcement is unbelievably perfect as they rubber-stamped approvals on every single request they received."
Or maybe Judges demanded a crapload of extra evidence for the tiny number of wire taps approved.
Re:For your safety... (Score:5, Insightful)
You did get the bit where no application for tap was turned down? They may not be able to tap everyone, but they can tap anyone which is nearly as scary...
Re:This will never happen... but.... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do you keep that from encouraging collusion among judges, to increase conviction rates?
In case of slashdotting.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Disturbing... (Score:1, Insightful)
What's with baseless statement in post? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no mention in the article about percentages of wiretap requests approved, so why make a baseless statement like this. Instead maybe the reason for the increase is because, as the article says:
"Drug dealers now are making use not just of traditional cell phones but a variety of devices, including Blackberries, pagers, and Nextels. So most likely these increased wiretap numbers simply reflect law enforcement's continuing efforts to keep pace with both the tactics and technology that is being used on the street," said Barr.
FUD (Score:3, Insightful)
Thing is, I'm not scared by this article. There are 290 million [census.gov] people living in the United States, and a 19% increase amounts to around 273 extra wiretaps across the country. Not scary. In fact, I'm surprised that the number is 10 times larger, given that it appears to be a small fraction of the number of crimes investigated every year that should have been wiretapped.
Furthermore, it may interest you to know that the legal standard for getting a wiretap is rather high (which is why there are so few of them).
See United States Telecom Assoc. v. FCC [uscourts.gov] . So how, you ask, is it that there were no wiretap requests turned down if the standard is so high, and it's used relatively rarely?Simple. It's not like the police officers are going "Hey Judge, we need a wire-tap on this guy Frank 'cuz I think he's doing "crimes" -- and we need it yesterday!" What actually happens is the police officer goes to government lawyer. The government lawyer -- who does this all the time -- then tells the police officer 9 times out of 10 that they haven't met the standard. Even that 1 time out of 10, the government lawyer approaches the judge ex parte (i.e. not in a court proceeding) which allows the judge to indicate through subtle nods and grunts that the wiretap request is half-cooked, and to come back later. So you just don't get denied applications. By the way -- denied applications are the last thing the police want, because then -- dollars to donuts (hehe) when it comes time to the criminal trial, the wiretap evidence will be considered inadmissible even if the police eventually did get their wiretap.
What Devlin Barrett, the reporter who wrote the article, should have mentioned, is how many wiretap requests were officially turned down over the last few years. But the reporter omitted this information, most likely because very few requests have been officially denied within the last decade. So the alarmist language used in the article makes it, IMHO, FUD.
Regards,
Moiche
Re:Does this include... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Oh, come on (Score:3, Insightful)
That's the official number, which is provided by the government. Now how many warrantless wiretaps did they perform?
You're presuming that the government is on the level when they furnish us with these fanciful numbers. History shows that we have every reason to be skeptical of anything any government says. It is in their interest to decieve people.
The credulity with which citizes treat these official statements is baffling. It's like battered-woman syndrome: the victim keeps believing the promises of her abuser to "never do it again," even after successive relapses of abuse. In the end, her low self-esteem, accompanied by her naive belief that she can redeem her lover of his cruelty, leads to her downfall, whether it comes quickly or slowly.
But it's a more insidious relationship for those who live under the "soft" despotism of the American state, because most of it's victims don't even realize that they are being abused. They simply accept each new press release as true, even after they learn that the previous one they heard was false. Why such trust?
"You know a tree by its fruit." Or something like that. There, I'm done venting.
Re:Not Surprising (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, most officers take care to do good police work, and manage to do so most of the time. No problem.
But there's no way in hell that ALL police officers asking for such warrants do a good job EVERY SINGLE TIME.
This stinks to heaven.