On Mon, 21 Nov 1994, Jamie Lawrence wrote:

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replied that the governmental concern about wiretaps was and is primarily and unambiguously about narcotics.

and

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Back to Narcotics. He gave the statistic that 90% of the narcotics leads related to money laundering come from domestic wiretaps.

Wow, this is easy then: legalize drugs and wiretaps are practically unessessary. Buy a copy of High Times today! ;)

Unfortunately this first bit is typical of the "Four Horseman" demonization. The fault here is a logic flaw called "After the fact, therefore because of the fact." In this case the reason that all the narcotics leads related to money laundering come from wiretaps is because this is the only method applied to obtaining such leads on a serious basis. I have long argued that the entire emphasis on the importance of wiretaps, and all the statistics associated with these arguments fail this basic test. Next time you hear someone touting the importance of wiretaps because X million dollars is saved by the criminals caught with wiretaps, ask "Why weren't normal physical/intrusive devices used?" One of the requirements in most showing requirements for the approval of wiretaps requires an agent to assert that a phone wiretap is the only way to obtain the needed information. Of course this has become a joke. The other issue, perhaps the real issue, is that wiretaps have more limited 4th amendment protections than do physical/intrusive devices. I think you'd solve a lot of problems by admitting that the crucial need for wiretapping ability is a farce and grew out of attempts to circumvent the 4th amendment in the then budding war on drugs. I expect any day to be told of the "wiretap" crisis, and following in the "crisis" political pattern (Declare a crisis, yank rights and replace them with entitlements) go back to a system where you have to lease your government subsidized (read bugged) phone equipment. Crypto hook in? Given the increased reliance on communications what has been the respective addition in protection for electronic communication privacy? None. If anything there is the opposite. If I'm wrong, I'd love to be corrected. So now that Crypto threatens the end run on the 4th amendment, government cries bloody murder. God forbid the citizenry might be allowed to protect themselves from 4th amendment circumvention. This is raised to the point of lunacy when one considers the rationale behind limited 4th amendment protections for telephone conversations, and the almost absent protection for call setup information. The rationale is essentially this: One must exert a manafest expectation of privacy to claim protection under the 4th amendment. Conveying the information to a third party, or any set of parties other than the recipiant, demonstrates a lack of manafest expectation of privacy. In the case of call setup information, you convey, intentionally, call setup information to the phone company, and thus cannot expect it to remain private. Now, when cryptography changes this balance, and essentially eliminates cleanly the entire rationale behind allowing wiretaps their favorable status outside active 4th amendment protection, we ban cryptography, or limit it so severely as to put it within the same "convey the information to a third party" analysis. (Clipper, where you "convey" your key to an escrow agent.) SURPRISE, you have no expectation of privacy in that information. No 4th amendment protection. Does any of this even strike you as odd in today's world however? I didn't think so. Wow, all that from a few lines of original text? (Oh well). -uni- (Dark) 073BB885A786F666 nemo repente fuit turpissimus - potestas scientiae in usu est 6E6D4506F6EDBC17 quaere verum ad infinitum, loquitur sub rosa - wichtig!