intercepts requested and authorized in the past year. As I recall, the number was quite small - around 12K [?]. Someone had found this out through an FOIA request, perhaps, (my recollection of it is poor). It was
I think it's about 1200.
not a large number, anyway. I must conclude that the actual number of intercepts is much, much larger than they are saying, and that they must be getting what they perceive to be good intel from all this snooping.
A more cautious conclusion would be would be that the importance (to the LEA's) of the busts made with crypto is much larger than the numbers suggest. You could interpret that a lot of ways: I suspect that high-profile career-enhancing cases are highly dependent on wiretaps.
It could also be argued that the number of busts and wire taps will go up dramatically as more and more people begin to use communications in more integrated ways with thier life and career. It is kind of a fallacy, but communications does seem to be a rapidly growing market. I imagine the folks who push for that sort of crap are thinking of the future, else we'd already have it.