Sorry, Wrong Wiretap 166
Rick Zeman writes "CNN is covering a little-mentioned Inspector General's report which mentions that the FBI 'sometimes gets the wrong number when it intercepts conversations in terrorism investigations' due to various reasons, and that 'The FBI could not say Friday whether people are notified that their conversations were mistakenly intercepted or whether wrongly tapped telephone numbers were deleted from bureau records.'"
sounds like... (Score:2, Insightful)
Oops, wrong line... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is just one more reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
The government might be ominous, but its run by humans, and they are too busy tripping on their own resume's to do anything truthfully scary. Its only individuals who are left without oversight that can be scary... groups of people.. pfft! Hitler and Mousolini were individuals... groups of people just don't manage to get it together fast enough or hard enough... self regulating so to speak...
Now, if individuals are doing wiretaps... could be different
Re:Not admissable (Score:2, Insightful)
Now that's a fucking lame excuse for breaking my rights.
Re:sounds like... (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. The problem really is that there USED to be judicial oversight. No more. Supporters of PATRIOT claim it's never been abused, thus it's not a problem.
Part of the blame .... (Score:2, Insightful)
But, you do bring up a point that a lot of folks have been asking- especially after Katrina.
There was advanced warning of a disaster, and there still was a lack of coordination and a delayed response. If TSA and local authorities couldn't get their act together with advanced warning, what are they going to do if we get attacked? And you're exactly right: How is it that these billions of dollars are being spent just to get what we saw these last few weeks?!?
Shocking!! The Government Ain't Perfect (Score:4, Insightful)
Police sometimes arrest the wrong people who haven't committed any crime.
Juries someimte convict the wrong person.
The FBI isn't perfect.
This is not exactly earth-shattering news here, unless you believe the government is some evil,perfect conspiracy out to get you. There's very little news value in this story.
Scuttlemonkey, why'd you have to make that dig about saying oops makes it ok? Nobody would say that, so why'd you have to flamebait like a troll? The editors just get worse and worse.
Re:Oops, wrong line... (Score:5, Insightful)
No notice to family. No procedures. They just come in grab you and send you off. No phone call to a lawyer. No reasons. Just get hauled off into the gulag for no reason (except to the FBI's whims - say you have a contrarian political view and are deemed a _political_ threat).
The long slope into a blatent facist state we have embarked on.
Re:Who cares? (Score:5, Insightful)
The slashdot view (Score:3, Insightful)
When you make a mistake on your taxes in your favor ?
When the cable company is accidentally giving you free porn ?
What would be the actual upshot of the FBI reporting these errors ? We'd have another source of employment for lawyers and another way to waste limited law enforcement resources.
The pursuit of criminal and or investigations is both a legitimate and neccesesary function of the government. The prople that complain most about the government doing its job are the same people that get the most upset when something untoward occurs.
Re:Oops, wrong line... (Score:3, Insightful)
Wiretaps are only given with permission of a court to a specific person (or specific people). Being permitted by a judge to wiretap a suspected bomb plotter and then accidentily tapping the wrong line and overhearing someone doing a drug deal is not a "good faith" effort. You were not making an effort to tap the WRONG phone (how can it be a "good faith" effort to admit into evidence of a phone line you didn't mean to tap?). You were not given permission to tap that phone so the evidence is not admissable in any court. Anything less would mean that the police would have carte blanche to use the order to wiretap one person's phone lines as an excuse to tap EVERYONE's phone lines and then finding whatever illegal information they can and using that to arrest totally unrelated people.
See the exclusionary rule [findlaw.com].
Re:The slashdot view (Score:1, Insightful)
Who's rights are being violated if I run a red light with no intersecting traffic or if I don't report all my income? Who am I to assume the cable company made a mistake if they are giving me free porn? Maybe its a special promotion. Who cares? I do not have power over others in the situations you mention.
In the case of the government, we are talking about a government that is SUPOSEDLY GOVERNING AT THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE. We also suposedly have a right to privacy and a right against unreasonable searches. If the government is not doing its job properly, why should I not know about it?
Backlog (Score:3, Insightful)
Radicode
Re:The slashdot view (Score:5, Insightful)
With power comes responsibility. If the FBI could get away with wiretapping the wrong person, how long before they wiretap anyone?
The question shouldn't be why not allow the police to do something, but should they be allowed to do something with the approiate oversight?
Just because I don't have anything to hide doesn't mean I shouldn't hide my life, using encryption and such.
Not true (Score:5, Insightful)
Governments dont have to be efficient, in fact the incompetence is what is scary. Innocent people will get screwed and the guilty will go free. The commies failed because even though they killed a lot of people, it was not necessarily the people they wanted to get. That's what the lack of oversight brings. The reason oversight is frowned upon is so that mistakes can be covered up.
If you are innocent, beware of inefficient groups of people.
Sadly there are those who dont care if there are innocent people getting screwed, as long as it's not them and they feel safe.
It's cheaper to "sacrifice" some innocents than to find out if their punishment is deserved.
Why do you think people support the idea of not finding out whether a non citizen is guilty before locking them up for life in Gitmo?
I'm keeping my tinfoil hat on. Tight.
Re:This is just one more reason... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, as long as it's the government itself, and not some human being listening in on you, there's no problem.
Re:The slashdot view (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember that we're all presumed innocent. To take an example of encryption, just because I'm using encryption does not mean that I am plotting nefarious schemes against my fellow citizens. I may be discussing confidential business things, for example. Y'know, dare I say it, I might actually work from home in an effort to not drive my car around and burn gas, hurt the environment, etc., etc.
These sorts of mistakes can be dangerous. Imagine the above example--I'm some bigshot business-guy. I own a publicly traded company. The FBI inadvertently taps my phone and learns that someone at the company I work for has just invented something that will make the company a ton of money. Do you really think those agents aren't going to call up their stock-brokers and say, "BUY! BUY! BUY!" (Or, assume the other direction, if you prefer)
Frankly, yes. I want to make it difficult for the government to wiretap it's citizens. I want somebody to look at the evidence that has been accumulated and act as my representative to say, "Hey, wait. Just because he encrypts his phone calls doesn't mean he's a terrorist." I want somebody to second-guess these guys.
The story of the gutsy cop who goes against procedure to nab the bad guys before they enact their evil deeds is a great movie. But it's not real life--remember, in most cases we get the see the bad guys planning their acts in the movies so we know who the bad guy is. Reality is not that cut-and-dried.
In short, I'm more worried about the government abusing it's power than of the terrorists blowing up a building. That happens alot more often.
RTFA? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people don't have to worry until they "accidentally" ask for a tap on your phone, e-mail address, and wireless phone. Even a payphone you might just use! The problem here is FBI "error", which makes me think that the court isn't asking enough questions.
Re:Supporters of the imPatriot Act... (Score:3, Insightful)
Very simple. Read some history. Read about Hoover's direction of the FBI, McCarthy, COINTELPRO, and REALIZE, that one of the primary roles of the FBI (at least within the past 50 years) has been to trample all over people and freedom in general. Not terrorists, PEOPLE...American citizens...supposedly living in a 'free' country.
Re: Sorry, Wrong Wiretap (Score:1, Insightful)
That's nice, in theory.
But how do they know they destroyed the data? For all they know, they could have a rogue agent who takes delight in releasing information to Drudge, or to an identity theft ring, or to his KGB handlers. Shouldn't you have a right to know, even after the fact, of a possible compromise of your personal information?
Re:Not true (Score:4, Insightful)
Ugh! For cryin' out loud, how do comments like this get modded insightful?
They weren't "commies". Communism had little to do with their government, let alone killing millions of people.
Communism is what could be considered the utopia government. Everyone works together and contributes to the whole, and everyone gets an equal and fair share.
But as has been shown in the past, the shiny happy cumbaya governments always fail or turn into something ugly due to the faults in human nature. People get greedy, and things fall apart from there.
All the "communist" regimes I know of (I could be missing some) are more authoratarian or fascist in nature. They claim to be communist but they aren't.
~X~
Re:What about the Constitution? (Score:3, Insightful)
Most people in the US would rather wipe their ass with it than try to read and comprehend it.
And then the people elect officials with the same view. Over the past few years "We The People..." have sat idly by as all those flag wavers in raped and pillaged the founding document of this country.
We let them do it. We encouraged them to do it. And some seem so shocked when they hear about it.
It's comedic and sad at the same time.
~X~
Re:No Knock (Score:5, Insightful)
Those facts are among the stark facts that make the "we need private guns so we can inhibit the police state" line of propaganda so clearly invalid. The police and army, armed forces of the state, are going to destroy any armed resistance. Widespread armament just escalates the conflict, when it occurs, to ensure people are killed, the state's forces dehumanize the people they're attacking. And that the people kill each other, while they're waiting to defend from the police "takeover". In reality, we have decades of experience in countries around the world showing that nonviolent resistance is a much more effective way to oppose state rule by force. Neither strategy works very well, but "armed resistance" doesn't work at all, and "nonviolent resistance" works more often than not, while preserving the people's life, dignity and organization until a confrontation that the people can win.
The problem with communism (Score:3, Insightful)
That opened a much larger window for the evil and violent sociopaths to get to the top and start running the show.
Otherwise, you might just have the run of the mill sociopaths, who would be like those parasites that don't inflict so much harm to their hosts. If you are fortunate some of those sociopaths might actually choose to be symbiotic.
Re: Sorry, Wrong Wiretap (Score:1, Insightful)
That's exactly why they should. If mistakes had real consequences for the agency, there would be fewer mistakes.
Re:The slashdot view (Score:3, Insightful)
The "patriot" act was around for at least 4 years before 9-11 because the drug enforcement people got tired of not being able to use that wonderful CIA installed intel base. The CIA knows who's smuggling what around the bays.. and can use illegal, unconstitutional means to make sure they're not plotting attacks.. That of course means their agents have first hand knowladge of "where the boddies are burried" for many crime bosses... but they can't tell because the info was obtained illegally... "Patriot" was all about a giant grab for that information so more "normal" crimes could be enforced from the CIA's extreme measures to get intel.