WHO'S WATCHING? NO, WHO'S LISTENING IN?

As concerns of the "Big Brother is watching you" variety grow, a report
issued in late May sheds some light on who, in fact, ought to be worried
that someone is listening in on the line.

The report, the 2001 Wiretap Report, is issued yearly by the Administrative
Office of the United States Courts and outlines the number and nature of
federal and state applications for wiretapping, as required by law.

Those wiretaps include the monitoring of telephone, oral and electronic
communications. The great majority, 83 percent, were telephone taps.

In 2001, 1,491 applications for wiretapping were requested, all of which
were granted. That is in keeping with a long-standing pattern: since 1991,
12,661 requests for wiretapping were submitted to the courts; all but 3
were authorized.

Last year, applications for wiretapping were up 25 percent compared with 2000.

Seventy-eight percent of all applications for so-called intercepts in 2001
cited drug-related crimes as the most serious offense under investigation,
followed - at some distance - by gambling, 5.5 percent; racketeering, 4.7
percent; and homicide and assault, 3.5 percent.

Those wiretaps, and the data in the report, do not include statistics on
wiretapping conducted for foreign intelligence purposes, including
terrorism investigations.

Those intercepts are governed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
and are authorized by a special panel, not through the regular court system.

Nor do they include wiretaps with the consent of one of the parties
involved in a communication, as when a police officer or informant is
participating in a conversation.

Demonstrating that those under surveillance are, at least, keeping pace
with technology, 68 percent of the wiretapping authorized last year was for
portable devices like cellphones and pagers.

Fourteen percent was for personal residences. Places of business were
involved in just 4 percent of wiretapping.

Those people under surveillance, however, apparently are not too
technically sophisticated.

Despite government concerns about the use of encryption technology by
criminals, it was encountered in only 16 cases last year, and in each
instance, investigators were able to decode the communication.