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IP: Courts OK record number of wiretaps
From: [email protected]
Subject: IP: Courts OK record number of wiretaps
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 10:55:30 -0500
To: [email protected]
Source: USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/ncs2.htm
09/30/98- Updated 12:06 AM ET
The Nation's Homepage
Courts OK record number of wiretaps
WASHINGTON - Federal judges operating in secret courts are
authorizing unprecedented numbers of wiretaps and clandestine
searches aimed at spies and terrorists operating in the USA, Justice
Department records show.
During the last three years, an average of 760 wiretaps and searches a
year were carried out, a 38% increase from the 550 a year from 1990
to 1994.
Federal judges have authorized a yearly average of 463 ordinary
wiretaps since 1990 in drug, organized crime and other criminal cases.
Part of the growth in surveillance is attributed to an increase in
espionage and terrorist activities in the USA.
"There's a greater quantity of the folks who are potentially problematic
out there," says Jamie Gorelick, who as deputy attorney general from
1994 to 1997 helped review wiretap applications.
Proponents say the surveillance reflects a stepped-up federal response
to increased terrorist activity on American soil.
Opponents argue that the process endangers the very liberties it seeks
to protect.
"This issue is where the rubber hits the road," says William Webster,
who headed the FBI in 1978 when the law allowing the secret wiretaps
was passed. "It's where we try to balance the concept of our liberty
against what has to be done to protect it."
The wiretaps, which are applied for by the Justice Department under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and carried out by the
FBI and National Security Agency, have received their greatest use yet
under President Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno.
Since 1995, FISA courts also have authorized searches of the homes,
cars, computers and other property of suspected spies. In its two
decades, FISA courts have approved 11,950 applications and turned
down one request.
Generally, defense lawyers can challenge the basis for authorizing a
wiretap. But supporting information for wiretaps authorized by the
FISA court are sealed for national security reasons.
"It legitimizes what would appear to be contrary to constitutional
protections," says Steven Aftergood, privacy specialist at the
Federation of American Scientists. "It's a challenge to the foundation of
American liberties."
Opponents also say the government is using the wiretaps to replace
conventional criminal searches which must meet a higher legal standard.
"There's a growing addiction to the use of the secret court as an
alternative to more conventional investigative means," says Jonathan
Turley, law professor at George Washington University in Washington,
D.C.
The wiretaps are meant to develop intelligence, not to help make
criminal cases. But the wiretap information was used to secure guilty
pleas from CIA turncoats Aldrich Ames in 1994 and Harold Nicolson
in 1997.
By Richard Willing, USA TODAY
�COPYRIGHT 1998 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.
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