Once Again, The Justice Department Fails To Tell Congress About Its Wiretapping Activities, As Required By Law
from the who-watches-this-stuff dept
The Justice Department sure doesn't like oversight -- even when it's required by law. Julian Sanchez points us to the disturbing news that, despite being required by law to report to Congress each year on "the number of pen register orders and orders for trap and trace devices applied for by law enforcement agencies of the Department of Justice," it appears that for many years the Attorney General has delivered no such report. This has happened before as well. In 2004, the Justice Department dumped five years worth of reports on Congress, and it appears it did so again in 2009. Meaning that Congress did not get the interim annual reports. That would mean that for five year periods, Congress -- who is supposed to be overseeing such surveillance activity -- has not been doing its job, effectively allowing the Justice Department to do what it wants with such surveillance efforts. And, remember, this is a Justice Department that has already been found to have massively abused surveillance activity beyond what the law allows. Doesn't that make you feel safer?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Filed Under: abuse, oversight, wiretapping
Companies: congress, justice department
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
So much safer...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So much safer...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: So much safer...
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: So much safer...
too bad too few people care enough to do it.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: So much safer...
If it voting could make a real difference, it would be illegal.
too bad too few people care enough to do it.
Oh, but they do. They're just voting "none of the above". Give them the choice of candidates they support and they'll actually go to the polls.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Of course!
YES! YES IT DOES!
*nervous glance*
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Unregulatable, Unauditable, Uncontrolled
Is the department of defence and pentagon auditable? No.
Is the Justice department auditable? No.
Are environmental agencies effective? Not another oil spill again!
How is the private health insurance industry going? Free reign there?
How is public education going? Not so well.
Financial industries? The bill and dispossession notices are in the works.
Social Welfare? Get rid of that, since that is too strictly controllable, and the banksters need the money.
Government agencies are becoming totally incapable today of changing how things are done. Things still get done, but in an uncoordinated and unsustainable way. Evolution is now happening in the degradation and corruption of all beaureaucratic processes. Reports are not worth doing, because either they will contain heaps of lies, or nobody will act on them anyway.
Large corporations suffer the same failures of scale.
All large human organizations suffer from diseases of
rising entropy and energy costs, and irrelevance to the future.
Progress just is not the same anymore.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Unregulatable, Unauditable, Uncontrolled
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Not likely
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Not likely
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There's no possible way for Congress to monitor everything they are supposed to monitor, regardless of how many committees, departments or bureaus they create.
Congressmen aren't interested in law enforcement, they're only interested in law creation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
There's no possible way for Congress to monitor everything they are supposed to monitor, regardless of how many committees, departments or bureaus they create.
Congressmen aren't interested in law enforcement, they're only interested in law creation.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wow Mike ,, we agree here !!
ME : 100% in sync with you here Mike.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Oversight
Congress sure does. Not monitoring the Justice Department is a massive oversight.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Wow, no trolls on this thread.
I call upon Techdirt to "out" trolls who get enough "report" buttons pushed on them. Publish times-of-day and IP addresses for trolls' comments.
At the very least, identify "Anonymous Coward" posts by something that maps to an IP address (maybe plus salt to avoid brute forcing things like SHA hashes). This allows those of use with 1 identity to figure out if one "Anonymous Coward" poster is the same as the other (e.g., is the e e cummings troll the same as the ex-Anti-Mike troll?).
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
Still, distinguishing one anonymous coward from the crowd of them isn't really-o, truly-o de-anonymizing, is it? Maybe it is. Guess I didn't think this through enough.
There's got to be some grounds where a long-time troll can be "outed".
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Re: Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
who cares?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
No, it wouldn't. IP addresses do not correspond to individuals. Perhaps you should refrain from making technical recommendations on subjects about which you are obviously ignorant. You're not a judge or a politician, are you?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
@14
YOUR the kind that makes anonymous needed in life WHY
CAUSE YOU HATE CAPSITALS DRIVES YOU UTTERLY DEVOID OF SENSE AND MEANING AND YOU GO DANCING AROUND A ROOM MAD
oh well back to regularly scheduled PROGRAMING FORM YOUR FAVORITE STATE RUN TV STATION.
AND now that this place too has and is going lawsuity and ani anonymous , i guess ill just tell all the peeps to stay away and mike can talk too...himself
never underestimate the power of 'word of mouth'
and this is what happened to michael geist and why his site now only has basically lawyers yapping amongst themselves
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
And Bruce, while I don't think revealing IP addresses is a good idea, I do think it would be nice to be able to tell which AC was which, as long as they still stay anonymous. Maybe color coding?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]