Kallstrom Calls All Calls Tappable

11-3-95. Wash Post:

   "Privacy Groups Assail FBI's Wiretapping Plan" [Excerpt]


   James Kallstrom, assistant FBI director in charge of the
   New York field division, argues that the proposal would in
   fact reduce the FBI's surveillance authority. "Today ... we
   could tap all the phones in the United States," he said,
   referring to older, pre-digital technology. Under the plan,
   the FBI's surveillance ability would shrink to a maximum of
   1 percent of simultaneous telephone calls from any one
   telephone switch, he said.

   Kallstrom said a typical central switching office in New
   York that serves 50,000 telephone lines has a capacity to
   carry only 5,000 calls simultaneously. It is the latter
   number, not the former, he said, on which the FBI bases its
   calculations. So the highest level of simultaneous
   surveillance in that area, he said, would be 50 lines.

   "We've never done that many" taps at one time, he said. But
   in a "worst-case scenario," such as a major act of
   terrorism, the agency might need such ability, he said. "I
   think it's a reasonable, minimal, conservative number."

John Young writes:
>    "Privacy Groups Assail FBI's Wiretapping Plan" [Excerpt]
> 
>    James Kallstrom, assistant FBI director in charge of the
>    New York field division, argues that the proposal would in
>    fact reduce the FBI's surveillance authority.

Kallstrom is the guy who was using the example of snuff films (a known
urban legend) to try to FUD the audiance at the Bar Association debate
into supporting key escrow.

It appears, by the way, that the FBI may have goofed here. Even Steve
Post, the morning classical radio announcer on WNYC-FM in New York,
was making fun of the FBI this morning.

[Lets try not to make this into an extensive thread. We all have work
to do. For example, I have a 4.4BSD IPSEC implementation in my
possession that I don't have time to integrate into NetBSD and FreeBSD
in the next few weeks. Any volunteers out there?]

Perry

James Kallstrom (FBI-NY) in The Washington Post:
>    "We've never done that many" taps at one time, he said. But
>    in a "worst-case scenario," such as a major act of
>    terrorism, the agency might need such ability, he said. "I
>    think it's a reasonable, minimal, conservative number."

In other words, they'll "round up the usual suspects" ?  Mr. Sose
to a White Courtesy Telephone, please.

The argument above is very different (and IMHO much less defensible for the
FBI) than the claim that the LEAs will in general have more investigations in
progress that require wiretapping. A gradual increase in wiretap orders in
a given area could plausibly happen as more and more interesting traffic
goes over the wire. But a sudden jump in activity after a crime has been
committed looks like a big fishing expedition. In particular, I fear that
judges will be more disposed to sign stacks of wiretap orders 
indiscriminately in the aftermath of a major act of violence.

-Futplex <futplex@pseudonym.com>