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Are the Feds Reading Your E-Mail?
from the Senators-want-to-know dept
Senators have finally noticed that the FBI has been increasing its surveillance capabilities with very little oversight to make sure they weren’t abusing their powers. Now, some Senators have
introduced legislation that would require the FBI and the DOJ to say how much spying they do on US citizens. The DOJ, of course, says the criticism is unfair, but the Senators also released a report saying that both organizations have been excessively secretrive, and not well trained in their own regulations regarding information disclosure.
Comments on “Are the Feds Reading Your E-Mail?”
No, it's more likely your local police department.
The FBI academy in Quantico, VA, only has capacity to graduate less than a thousand agents a year. Most of them end up fighting mundane street crimes like bank robberies. Even the non-agent positions have long, stringent security clearance processes. Unless there are 10 million FBI employees who parachuted out of black helicopters last night, the FBI/DOJ’s manpower resources are quite limited. They don’t have the manpower or technical know-how to read all the damn emails.
In the real world of law enforcement, most phone taps or other surveillance is initiated by local or state police, for whom it is easier to get judicial approval. If the intelligence is juicy, it will get passed on to the FBI. The FBI only needs a few hundred court authorizations for wiretaps per year, for very high profile cases where they don’t want to involve local cops.
So yeah, if anyone knows what you had for breakfast, it’s the fat cop at Starbucks who was watching you. The men in trenchcoats and sunglasses who drew your attention were real estate agents.
No Subject Given
“Senators have finally noticed that the FBI has been increasing its surveillance capabilities with very little oversight…”
Meaning…… some senator is at risk of getting caught with his pants down and he doesn’t like it, or what? Don’t even try to tell me some senator gives a rat’s patootie about the general public’s concerns. (oh wait… this isn’t an election year is it?)