Kevin Poulsen of the Wired News Threat Level blog writes,
U.S. News and World Report says THREAT LEVEL needs to take a chill pill on the issue of internet surveillance. "Nothing quite excites the blogosphere like a threat to its fiefdom," zings reporter Chris Wilson, who claims that last Monday's deadline for broadband providers to become wiretap friendly is mostly a nonevent, given how rare internet wiretaps are.
Wired christened today as "Wiretap the Internet Day." It caught on, igniting buzz about the subject this morning. …
But according to annual reports on incidents of wiretapping issued by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, the hype from this particular law may be overplayed. The vast majority of wiretaps granted through this avenue, known as a "Title III" surveillance, are issued for phones. In 2006, only 13 of the 1,714 intercept orders were for electronic communication, down from 23 out of a total of 1,694 in 2005.
But Wilson misses the truth in those numbers, as surely as he misses our original point: the quick and easy wiretapping ushered in by CALEA results in more domestic surveillance. Since the deadline for internet CALEA compliance was this week — and time moves forward, not backwards — internet surveillance numbers are still low compared to telephone surveillance, which has had CALEA for years.
Read the full post here: Link.
