On Fri, 10 Nov 1995, James A. Donald wrote:
At 05:15 PM 11/8/95 -0500, ACLUNATL@aol.com wrote:
According to the government's own statistics, 1,800 innocent conversations are intercepted each and every time a wiretap or other form of electronic surveillance is placed.
This seems curiously inefficient, even for government work.
Not at all. When a wiretap goes up, agents listen to every call that goes to or from the phone. If the call doesn't relate to anything "criminal," they must "minimize" the interception by not listening. They can listen again after some minutes to see if the topic has changed. The pre-wiretap minimization conference for agents is taken very seriously by ethical prosecutors (not an oxymoron for those who ask). Good agents (ditto) also take the briefing seriously. EBD