Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau

There are many, many arguments to offer against indiscriminate wiretapping.  Here’s one that fiscal conservatives might find persuasive:  It’s so expensive that the government can’t afford it.

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government’s most sensitive and secretive criminal and intelligence investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

The best comment in the article is from the ACLU:

“It seems the telecoms, who are claiming they were just being ‘good patriots’ when they allowed the government to spy on us without warrants, are more than willing to pull the plug on national security investigations when the government falls behind on its bills,” said former FBI agent Michael German, the ACLU’s national security policy counsel. “To put it bluntly, it sounds as though the telecoms believe it when the FBI says the warrant is in the mail but not when they say the check is in the mail.”

I don’t know what I like more:  The thought that companies doing business with the government have gotten stiffed on the bill, or the thought that a repo man might show up at FBI headquarters to confiscate wiretap equipment.