Once Again, The Justice Department Fails To Tell Congress About Its Wiretapping Activities, As Required By Law

from the who-watches-this-stuff dept

Wed, Jun 16th 2010 8:00pm — Mike Masnick

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?

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Filed Under: abuse, oversight, wiretapping
Companies: congress, justice department

25 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2010 @ 9:16pm

Just remember, you can get away with anything as long as you say it's to protect against terrorism. Just remember that next time you're busted for public urination.
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Lonny Paul (profile), 16 Jun 2010 @ 9:24pm

So much safer...
There should be a citizen review panel.
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ChurchHatesTucker (profile), 16 Jun 2010 @ 10:02pm

Of course!
" Doesn't that make you feel safer?"

YES! YES IT DOES!

*nervous glance*
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Anonymous Coward, 16 Jun 2010 @ 10:17pm

Re: So much safer...
and who will review the citizens review panel?
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y0uf00bar, 16 Jun 2010 @ 11:40pm

Unregulatable, Unauditable, Uncontrolled
This is part of seriously bad trend that sets a low standard for the ability of any large government agency to oversee itself, let alone other agencies.

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.
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Mikkel (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 12:34am

Not likely
This is why I refer to the judiciary as the "legal system". Justice? They've never heard of it.
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RAH, 17 Jun 2010 @ 1:17am

This is what happens as a massive bureaucracy collapses under its own weight.

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.
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RAH, 17 Jun 2010 @ 1:17am

This is what happens as a massive bureaucracy collapses under its own weight.

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.
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RAH, 17 Jun 2010 @ 1:21am

Re:
Hmph. I clicked the 'submit' button once and received two posts. Better odds than a Vegas slot machine, I suppose.
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Technopolitical (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 3:33am

Wow Mike ,, we agree here !!
MIKE :"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."

ME : 100% in sync with you here Mike.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2010 @ 4:07am

Re: Re: So much safer...
i will
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abc gum, 17 Jun 2010 @ 5:05am

Re: Unregulatable, Unauditable, Uncontrolled
Entropy just isn't what it used to be.
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Pixelation, 17 Jun 2010 @ 7:06am

Oversight
"The Justice Department sure doesn't like oversight -"

Congress sure does. Not monitoring the Justice Department is a massive oversight.
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Bruce Ediger (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 7:29am

Wow, no trolls on this thread.
Hey, neither "anonymous coward", the e e cummings stylist, or the ex-Anti-Mike have bothered to comment on this one.

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?).
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harbingerofdoom (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 7:37am

Re: So much safer...
there already is one. its called an election.

too bad too few people care enough to do it.
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Technopolitical (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 8:10am

Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
i agree
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NAMELESS.ONE, 17 Jun 2010 @ 8:18am

@14
you want trolls outted so your law firm can start some new kind of lawsuits do ya

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
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Any Mouse, 17 Jun 2010 @ 9:42am

Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
So, you want.. to take the anonymous posts... and make them /not/ anonymous? Think about that for a moment...
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Bruce Ediger (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 9:50am

Re: Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
Ha ha! I think you got me. My face is red!

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".
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Nastybutler77 (profile), 17 Jun 2010 @ 10:36am

Perhaps we should start calling it the "Injustice Dept." from now on.

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?
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2010 @ 12:14pm

Re: Not likely
There's no such thing as justice. Get over it.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2010 @ 2:37pm

Re: Re: So much safer...
there already is one. its called an election.

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.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Jun 2010 @ 3:23pm

Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
This allows those of use with 1 identity to figure out if one "Anonymous Coward" poster is the same as the other

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?
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chris (profile), 18 Jun 2010 @ 6:25am

Re: Re: Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
There's got to be some grounds where a long-time troll can be "outed".

who cares?
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jun 2010 @ 10:36am

Re: Wow, no trolls on this thread.
Also, many people have dynamic IP addresses that change over time causing the hash to change unpredictably. and many hostmasks also change over time being that many hostmasks contain their related IP addresses. and trolls can also use the report button just as well and they are most likely to abuse it.
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