FBI Gets 500 Mil to Tap Your Communications

[Ross Wright <rwright@adnetsol.com>]

||| FBI moderates its communications-surveillance request |||

TBTF for 5/4/95 [6]

In 1995 the FBI asked for and was granted $500 million to augment the
government's ability to tap communications (of this total $100M has
been released to the FBI so far). Privacy advocates expressed outrage
at the FBI's stated capacity goal: to be able to listen in on 1% of
installed telephone lines at any time. This translates to about 1.6
million taps simultaneous of all kinds: pen registers, trap-and-trace,
and wiretaps. The FBI withdrew its initial proposal under fire and on
1/14 submitted a revised proposal -- press release at [7], analysis
at [8]. Unlike the earlier draft, this essay lays out its assumptions
and straightforwardly projects needed capacity growth. The result is
a capacity figure of fewer than 60,000 intercepts, less that 4% of
the original request. This level of capability would allow the FBI
simultaneously to monitor more than 500 phone lines in an area with
the population of Manhatta still an enormous increase on historical 
numbers of intercepts.

[6]  <http://www.tbtf.com/archive/05-04-95.html>
[7]  <http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/tele/telephon.htm>
[8]  <http://www.cdt.org/publications/pp_3.01.html>

Fuck the FBI.

Ross


=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ross Wright
King Media: Bulk Sales of Software Media and Duplication Services
http://www.slip.net/~cdr/kingmedia
Voice: 415-206-9906