Interesting People mailing list archives
IP: LA wiretaps update
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1998 16:53:05 +0800
From: David Wagner <daw () cs berkeley edu> To: farber () cis upenn edu There's a very good article in the LA New Times which your IP readers may be interested in. It gives an update on the news that for years the LAPD has been surreptiously wiretapping ten of thousands of people, without telling anyone. Now the LAPD is fighting to defend its actions... Folks following the CALEA debates (remember the FBI's demands for capacity to wiretap 1% of all phone calls, etc.?) may find the information especially timely. Excerpts: Thanks to D.A. Gil Garcetti and the LAPD, Los Angeles is the wiretap capital of America. But it's not just criminals who're being spied on. [...] Bound by statute to employ taps only as an investigative means of last resort, prosecutors and police seemingly use them as a first resort -- handing off tips to narcotics officers who open cases on suspects they otherwise would never have known about. In the process, the LAPD and D.A.'s office have systematically denied a still unknown number of defendants their constitutional rights and eavesdropped on countless local residents with no criminal involvement -- without bothering to notify them they were tapped, as required by law. The story: http://www.newtimesla.com/1998/081398/feature1-1.html The public defender's web page on the case: http://pd.co.la.ca.us/index.htm
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- IP: LA wiretaps update Dave Farber (Aug 15)