Secret Warrants and Black Bag Jobs--Questions

Kerry L. Bonin kerry at vscape.com
Wed Aug 8 17:13:39 PDT 2001


At 04:21 PM 8/8/01 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote:
>At 08:59 AM 8/8/2001 -0700, Tim May wrote:
>
>>  According to my sources ("The Sopranos" 8-)), those doing the bugging 
>> are supposed to "not listen" except when putatively criminal acts are 
>> being discussed.
>
>The Sopranos gets it right - the process is called "minimization", and is 
>intended to limit the evidence collected to only that which discloses 
>criminal activity - there are strict rules about how a conversation can be 
>sampled, as the show portrayed.
>
>But the agents don't need to follow the rules if they don't intend to ever 
>use the proceeds of the tap in court, or disclose its existence.

There is the additional use of evidence raised publicly in LA a few years
back - that LEO routinely passed information collected during wiretapping
to other officers that could be used to collect legal grounds for
admissible search against people not directly related to the initial
wiretapping.  In the LA case, this was sometimes as simple as "be at X at Y
time", where the tipped off LEO could observe an incident "accidentally"
without having to reveal their source.

>>1) Are the secret warrants always revealed eventually, regardless of 
>>whether a court case happens or the evidence is introduced? Is it possible 
>>that there are N never-revealed secret warrants for every warrant 
>>discussed in open testimony?
>
>Yes. There is a time limit for when they should be disclosed if they don't 
>lead to a prosecution - that time limit can be extended by a judge, if the 
>agents think they need more time to develop a case. I don't believe the 
>(federal) law allows for taps to go undisclosed forever, but I believe it 
>happens anyway. Since the undisclosed taps aren't likely to be the focus of 
>litigation, there's no effective check on that practice.

I'd imagine this would depend on the nature of the investigation.  If the
feds can make a case that unsealing the warrant could compromise a
"critical contact" (even if they are in fact a worthless paid informant
used as a warrant justification factory) or a "critical technical means"
(i.e. Radio Shack directional microphone), its likely this would never be
unsealed.  There are also cases where "national security" is raised by
SS/CIA/NSA/EPA(sic), and the public will never see any of the paperwork
shreds.





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