Busy Year for Big Brother

By Declan McCullagh - Wired.com

May 25, 2002 PDT

WASHINGTON -- Wiretaps leaped in number once again last year, mostly due to drug investigations, new government figures show.

Federal and state police legally intercepted approximately 2.3 million conversations and pager communications in 2001, spending about $72 million in the process, the federal court system's annual report says.

The true number of authorized wiretaps is likely to be far greater. This week's figures do not include all U.S. Customs surveillance -- some of their records were lost in the destruction of the World Trade Center -- or those super-secret investigations done under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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