Approved Government Wiretaps Increased by 34% in 2010 — Hopenchange Just Keeps Getting Better & Better
Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on July 9, 2011
Obama & Warrantless Wiretapping | Graphic credit: Gizmodo
Liberals screamed bloody murder about when Pres. George W. Bush signed the US PATRIOT Act 44 days after the devastating Islamic jihad jet-plane attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the bloody annihilation of nearly 3,000 innocent people.
Not one of them is screaming now, despite a new report that shows a troubling, massive increase in 2010 of approved government wiretapping across the country. Pres. Obama not only approved a four-year extension of the Patriot Act in 2010, he also supports tapping into Blackberries, Skype, and other Internet communications.
Collectively, wiretapping increased 34 percent in 2010 over 2009.
At the federal level — the Barack Obama-Eric Holder DOJ level — government-approved wiretaps have increased 82 percent.
It’s the Era of Hopenchange™, baby.
Reminder of what Barack Obama said about wiretapping in 2007…
From San Jose Mercury News, Wiretapping figures up for 2010, with adjustments:
WASHINGTON—The number of court-approved wiretaps rose 34 percent last year, though an unspecified amount of the increase was the result of changed reporting procedures.
According to a report by the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, federal wiretaps rose 82 percent in 2010 from the previous year while state applications rose 16 percent. Combined, 3,194 wiretaps were authorized—1,207 by federal judges, 1,987 by state judges.
From Daily Caller, Government wiretaps increase by 34 percent in 2010:
The number of wiretaps conducted by federal and state law enforcement in 2010 jumped 34 percent from the prior year, according to a new federal report.
The 2010 Wiretap Report said federal and state courts approved 3,194 orders for intercepting wire, oral or electronic communications. That was up from the 2,376 intercepts approved in 2009.
Here’s some more fun facts from the report:
* Of all the applications for wiretap intercepts, 84 percent (2,675) cited illegal drugs as the most serious offense under investigation. The top three state wiretaps resulting in the most arrests were all narcotics related.
* The average cost of a wiretap was $50,085, down 4 percent from 2009.
* The average number of persons whose communications were intercepted rose from 113 per wiretap order in 2009 to 118 per wiretap order in 2010.
* Only 26 percent of intercepted communications in 2010 were incriminating. Only one request for authorization was denied.
* The top three states with approved wiretap applications were California, New York and New Jersey.
California is the hands-down winner for all states for government-approved wiretaps… they must be so proud:
2010 Wire Tap Report: Top three states in wire tapping are California, New York, & New Jersey
Another statistic I found on page 10 of the report — the number of authorized intercept applications reported by year has increased 168 percent between 2000 and 2010.
Utterly stunning.
From Hot Air, Wiretap usage up 34% in 2010:
There isn’t any kidding about the top three states, either. California accounted for a third of all state requests (33%), with New York accounting for almost a quarter (24%) and New Jersey getting the bronze at 11%. These three states account for 68% of all state wiretap requests. New York and New Jersey have well-known problems with organized crime, but why is California — with a population just slightly larger than New York — surpassing both by such a large amount? Most likely, violent gang-related drug trafficking is the reason, but it’s a little mind-boggling to think that one in every three state-level wiretap requests comes from one single state. Californians might want to ask whether the police are going a little crazy with the intercepts in the Golden State.
Actually, everyone should ask that question, and not just of the police. In over 3100 wiretap requests, only one judge — one — bothered to deny a request from police, even though only 26% of intercepts provided any incriminating information in the end.
Barack Obama spoke out against government wiretapping in 2006 when he was a senator — but that was then, this is now.
How quickly perceptions change for liberals when a Democrat is in Oval Office.
From Mike Riggs at Reason, Federal Wiretapping, Like Almost Everything Else, Bigger Under Obama Than Under the Horrible, Evil Republican He Replaced:
More deportations, more spending, more wars, more lawsuits against government whistleblowers, and now, according to Forbes, more federal wiretaps:
2010, it seems, was a landmark year for federal snooping. According to the U.S. courts systems’ annual report on law enforcement wiretaps, federal law enforcement requested 1,207 intercepts placed on phones and electronic communications last year, nearly double the 663 requested in 2009.
Overall, wiretaps jumped 34%, including a smaller increase in the number of state-requested law enforcement eavesdropping. The total comes to 3,194 requests, up from 2,376 in 2009 and just 1,190 in the year 2000.
What explains the jump? Obama’s DOJ is using more wiretapping in the war on drugs.
And in the DOJ’s rapidly deteriorating Fast and Furious snafu:
Over the July Fourth weekend, there was a major development in the Fast and Furious investigation when BATF head Ken Melson made a surprise July 4th appearance before Darrel Issa and Chuck Grassley’s congressional committee put together to investigate Fast and Furious.
[...]
Testimony was set up for July 13th, but then something very interesting happened. Apparently there was a clause in the agreement between the committee and the Department of Justice saying that “witnesses who choose to attend a voluntary interview with their own lawyer are free to exercise that right rather than participate with counsel representing the Department’s interests.”
Melson apparently was never made aware of it, and neither were Rep. Issa or Senator Grassley and they weren’t exactly pleased about not being informed. But when it became known, Melson chose to appear before the committee with his own lawyer over this last weekend.
In the letter linked above to Attorney General Eric Holder, Issa and Grassley wrote that Melson’s testimony was ‘extremely helpful to our investigation’ which was just the first bit of bad news they had for President Obama’s Attorney general:
According to Mr. Melson, it was not until after the public controversy that he personally reviewed hundreds of documents relating to the case, including wiretap applications and Reports of Investigation (ROIs). By his account, he was sick to his stomach when he obtained those documents and learned the full story.
Mr. Melson said that he told the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) at the end of March that the Department needed to reexamine how it was responding to the requests for information from Congress.
[...]
Issa has already stated that he has proof Eric Holder was out and out lying about what he knew about Fast and Furious and when he knew it. Now it’s just a matter of moving up the ladder and getting these people to rat out one another until they get to Holder.
The cover up’s always worse than the original offense in these matters.
In September 2010, the New York Times reported:
An Obama administration plan to make wire tapping the Internet easier for law enforcement and national security agencies was met with silence by online companies Monday. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo and Research in Motion – never shy about issuing press releases – all declined to talk about what would be a major shift in privacy law.
[...]
Privacy advocates criticize the plan as a threat to free speech and open to abuse. However, major technology companies, which vociferously defend their privacy records, today declined to weigh in on the proposal – never mind that it could affect their users and require some technical gymnastics to implement.
Only Facebook would comment, if only generally, saying in a statement: “We will examine any proposal when and if it materializes but we can’t comment on something we haven’t seen. Generally, it’s our policy to only comply with valid, legal requests for data.”
[...]
Under the proposal, the Internet companies will have to have systems in place that would allow law enforcement to intercept messages if asked to do so by law enforcement. Some companies already have such technology in place, but some do not and have to build such systems after being served.
This was also reported by the NYT in September 2010, U.S. Tries to Make It Easier to Wiretap the Internet:
Federal law enforcement and national security officials are preparing to seek sweeping new regulations for the Internet, arguing that their ability to wiretap criminal and terrorism suspects is “going dark” as people increasingly communicate online instead of by telephone.
Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages.
The bill, which the Obama administration plans to submit to lawmakers next year, raises fresh questions about how to balance security needs with protecting privacy and fostering innovation. And because security services around the world face the same problem, it could set an example that is copied globally.
That onerous hopenchange just keeps getting better and better…
Hilarious - federal government wiretapping has skyrocketed
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