Re: Are there enough FBI agents to handle Digital Telephony?????

["Perry E. Metzger" <perry@piermont.com>]

Timothy C. May writes:
> At 4:05 PM 11/21/95, Peter Wayner wrote:
> >Has anyone ever done the math on the FBI's new wire tapping
> >proposals and determined whether they'll have enough agents to
> >do all of the listening?> ...
> 
> The manpower shortage can be solved by moving the listening step offshore,
> perhaps to one of the Carribbean islands that processes credit card slips.

Am I the only person who thought that the point was to be able to
selectively target certain areas but not necessarily all areas? For
instance, lets say the known criminal Tim May is going to be in some
place for a while -- by conducting roving taps of all conversations, I
can find him. 1% capacity should be enough to make that practical. As
another example, lets say there is some sort of political insurgency
building up in some city -- presumably, one could devote all one's
roving manpower to just that place for a few weeks and crush it.

I can see no conventionally legitimate need or way to exploit the
capability, but with unconventional and illegitimate techinques...

Perry