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.