[privacy] FBI Unit That Lied To Get Phone Records Now Wants $5 Million To Pay Sn ooping Telecoms

["Paul Ferguson" <fergdawg () netzero net>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Via Threat Level.

[snip]

An FBI unit reportedly facing a criminal investigation for abusing the
Patriot Act is asking Congress for $5.3 million in 2008 to continue paying
three telecommunications companies to store Americans phone and internet
records for years and to provide instantaneous access. The Justice
Department has long been pushing telecommunications companies to retain
phone and internet records for longer periods of time, and the contracts
largely achieve the FBI's goals.

The contracts, which originally included AT&T, Verizon and MCI, were first
revealed after the Justice Department's Inspector General put out a report
showing that a key anti-terrorism office were getting phone records from
telecoms with letters that included knowingly false statements. Verizon
purchased MCI in 2006, and the identity of the third phone company is not
public. The Justice Department has refused to respond to Wired News' open
government request for the contracts.

The Telecommunications Data Collection Center now wants to pay each company
$1.8 million annually to develop databases that keep "at least two years'
worth of network calling records." Additionally, the funds would guarantee
that each company would "provide a dedicated on-site employee to process
the exigent lawful requests for data."

[snip]

More:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/07/fbi-unit-that-l.html

Background:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2007/07/exigentinvestigation

- - ferg

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: PGP Desktop 9.6.2 (Build 2014)

wj8DBQFGnr44q1pz9mNUZTMRAg5TAJ4w08DNPU2p/nX9/XVlwxl40USZkACfQhyq
WFI2ZAvIYqZ3nmlqjk1FwdE=
=xina
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----


--
"Fergie", a.k.a. Paul Ferguson
 Engineering Architecture for the Internet
 fergdawg(at)netzero.net
 ferg's tech blog: http://fergdawg.blogspot.com/

_______________________________________________
privacy mailing list
privacy () whitestar linuxbox org
http://www.whitestar.linuxbox.org/mailman/listinfo/privacy