From: futplex@pseudonym.com (Futplex)
Date: Sat, 4 Nov 1995 16:00:38 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com (Cypherpunks Mailing List)
Subject: Re: FBI Wants to Wiretap One of Every 100 Phones in Urban Areas
In-Reply-To: <9511030810.AA0038@cnct-gw.new-york.net>
Message-ID: <199511030603.BAA24442@opine.cs.umass.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


clarkm@cnct.com writes:
> > Last year, federal and state courts authorized 1,154 wiretaps, 
[...]
> > "People are starting to say that seems awfully high," Dempsey said, noting 
> > that the overall level of such surveillance activity is now a total of 
> > 20,000 to 25,000 intercepts nationwide over an entire year.
> 
> So what is it?  1,154 wiretaps?  Or 20,000?

For one thing, many conversations on a line may be intercepted over time
after the initial wiretap order is given. Also wiretapping is not the only 
form of electronic surveillance that tends to get reported in these numbers. 

The official federal wiretap reports for the last several years place the
number of wiretaps in the neighborhood of 1,000+ in each of those years. 

Actually the number 20,000 sounds strange -- it seems too high merely to be
a total of surveillance orders/operations, yet far too low to count all
interceptions. I recently heard the total number of conversations intercepted
per year in the U.S. estimated on the order of 2,000,000. Some rather small
percentage of those were categorized as "incriminating". I suppose it might
have been 1%, which would work out to 20,000 incriminating intercepted calls
per year nationwide.

-Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>