Re: FBI Gets 500 Mil to Tap Your Communications

[azur@netcom.com (Steve Schear)]

>||| 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>
>

At least as important was their request to legally tap any telephone line
for 48 hours w/o a warrant.  What ever happended to that?

-- Steve