From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 7 Aug 1996 19:12:55 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Freeh slimes again: Digital Telephony costs $2 billion now  ...
Message-ID: <199608070259.TAA17442@toad.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
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>>> Louis Freeh is now asking the Congress for $2 billion to fund
>>> Digital Telephony.  Yes, that is FOUR TIMES what he said it

>How many crimes, approximately, are going to be solved or prevented by the 
>expenditure of this $2 billion dollars?  One hundred?  A thousand? 

I haven't been able to find the reference, but a month or two ago
there was an article on the net or in a newspaper about the targets
of wiretapping - how many wiretaps were for drugs, gambling, tax evasion,
and of course terrorism.  The number of wiretaps for bombs and guns
was something low like 80 in the last 5-10 years - about 1/10%. 
        (Did anybody else see this article??)
On the other hand, the recent articles in the press about increasing
bomb-related crimes in the US; it's up to about 3000/year from 2000 in 5 yrs.
So maybe 1/10% of the bombing investigations  have even used wiretapping.

So why is Louis Freeh ranting up and down about the need to
ban encryption because he needs wiretapping to catch terrorists?
At least he could be honest and rant about the need to stop the
hordes of drug dealers and escalate the War On Gambling.


#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# <A HREF="http://idiom.com/~wcs"> 	Defuse Authority!