Re: Telephone switch capacity -Reply

At 18:43 11/3/95, Rich Graves wrote:
>[about the FBI supposedly wanting the ability to tap 1% of all phones in
>the US simultaneously]

[...]
>Of course the FBI doesn't have the staff to listen to all these lines, and
>they need an individual court order to authorize each individual
>interception, so this numbers game is a bit of a joke.

One more time. Despite what you read in the papers, despite what most
people - even in the legal profession - believe, telephone wiretaps do
_not_ require a court order. They haven't required a court order in over a
year. The Digital Telephony Bill, which passed Congress by an overwhelming
margin, _explicitly_ allows for wiretap authorizations other than a court
order. The law does not impose any rules for these "other forms of
authorization".

"The captain signed it off" may suffice.


-- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
   PGP encrypted mail preferred.

Lucky Green writes:
> One more time. Despite what you read in the papers, despite what most
> people - even in the legal profession - believe, telephone wiretaps do
> _not_ require a court order. They haven't required a court order in over a
> year.

They never required a conventional court order. This was not new. They
always had a national security escape clause. However, at least they
cannot be used in court unless there was a court order involved, and
the process of getting "legitimate" authorization to, say, bug the
embassy phones, does require that certain forms be followed.

The real problem, IMHO, is that people can avoid the formalities
entirely and simply unlawfully wiretap, and that tracing such attempts
is hard.

Perry

On Sat, 4 Nov 1995, Lucky Green wrote:

> At 18:43 11/3/95, Rich Graves wrote:
> >[about the FBI supposedly wanting the ability to tap 1% of all phones in
> >the US simultaneously]
> 
> [...]
> >Of course the FBI doesn't have the staff to listen to all these lines, and
> >they need an individual court order to authorize each individual
> >interception, so this numbers game is a bit of a joke.
> 
> One more time. Despite what you read in the papers, despite what most
> people - even in the legal profession - believe, telephone wiretaps do
> _not_ require a court order. They haven't required a court order in over a
> year. The Digital Telephony Bill, which passed Congress by an overwhelming
> margin, _explicitly_ allows for wiretap authorizations other than a court
> order. The law does not impose any rules for these "other forms of
> authorization".
> 
> "The captain signed it off" may suffice.


And Clinton issued an executive order allowing Janet Reno (or her 
designees, I believe) to approve wiretaps.

bd


> 
> 
> -- Lucky Green <mailto:shamrock@netcom.com>
>    PGP encrypted mail preferred.
> 
> 
>