Two Charts Show How the Drug War Drives US Domestic Spying

[avcpl]

Earlier this month the US court system released its annual report of every wiretap over the last year for which it granted law enforcement a warrant. And of those 3,554 wiretaps in 2014, fully 89 percent were for narcotics cases. That’s the highest percentage of wiretaps focused on drugs in the report’s history, and it continues a steady increase in the proportion of drug-focused spying. Twenty-five years ago, just 62 percent of wiretaps were for drug cases.

for the rest of the text:

http://www.wired.com/2015/07/drug-war-driving-us-domestic-spying/

 

[Carl Landrover]

There was a similar article like this about a year back, maybe longer. It was more about how easy it was to get a wiretap for a drug case. Not only do drug cases have the highest percentage of wiretap usage but they're the easiest to get a wiretap.

I think it's now just a regular option whereas it used to be an option that was used after all other modes of investigation have been exhausted and have not yielded any significant results.

 

[sigmond]