
With a single wiretap, police collected 9.2M text messages - OrgNet
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/29/wiretap-prosecutors-texas/
======
lettergram
Buried in the article is that no arrests were made and that warrants for
wiretapping requests were down 25% overall in 2018.

However, warentless wiretapping was up 25%:

[https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/nsa-surveillance-
spike/](https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/30/nsa-surveillance-spike/)

~~~
lern_too_spel
That article is confusing due to the author being confused himself.
Warrantless wiretaps can only be ordered for non-US people living outside the
United States believed to have national security relevant communications.
These people do not have Fourth Amendment protection.

The ODI's transparency report (the article's only citation, from which I have
obtained every fact in this post) says that indeed went up from 129K targets
in 2017 to 165k targets in 2018, but the article never mentions that. Instead,
it talks about searching the recorded communications of those targets for
communications related to US people who aren't being wiretapped themselves.

~~~
sandworm101
>> Warrantless wiretaps can only be ordered for non-US people living outside
the United States

Except in the case of voluntary handovers, situations where the communication
provider hands over data without the need of a warrant. A cop can purchase the
same location or other data any advertiser can.

[https://www.wired.com/2017/02/police-get-location-data-
witho...](https://www.wired.com/2017/02/police-get-location-data-without-
warrant-end/)

~~~
lern_too_spel
That is not a wiretap. A wiretap obtains contents of communications.

There is also no evidence that voluntary handovers are increasing.

~~~
mehrdadn
Confused, can someone explain why this is downvoted?

~~~
sandworm101
Defining wiretaps as only content is splitting legal hairs. Location data
alone can get people convicted. Browsing history (IP address/DNS lookups etc)
and connection data (who you texted etc) is arguably also not "content". For
the person facing the charges there is little practical difference between a
content "wiretap" and non-content non-wiretap.

~~~
darawk
The word "wiretap" has a specific meaning, though. It does not mean location
data. It means content. Nobody uses the word "wiretap" to mean location data.

~~~
darkpuma
The word "wiretap" has a specific _obsolete_ meaning. The state of telephony
moved on and so did the state of "wiretapping", rendering the _term itself_ an
anachronism. Incidentally "pen register", e.g. recording the metadata of a
line, is also an anachronism.

Considering both of these terms are anachronisms originally created to
describe distict devices which haven't been used in decades, getting bent out
of shape over the difference between the two doesn't seem like a productive
direction to steer the conversation.

~~~
darawk
The word wiretap has a clear meaning that is unrelated to the physical process
it used to represent. Literally everyone understands this. There are many
terms like this, and it's not a problem. We don't need to redefine the term
"wiretap" just because you're no longer physically tapping wires. What is
being revealed is the same, that is what everyone cares about, and so that is
how the term is used.

~~~
darkpuma
The term wiretap is a term of art and as such is bound to be used imprecisely
by people who aren't experts in that particular domain. Getting upset over
somebody saying 'wiretap' instead of 'pen register' really exemplifies the
worst aspects of socializing with engineers and lawyers.

As you allude to, seeing the forest instead of the trees reveals that people
who are upset _don 't care_ how any of it works and they _don 't care_ which
terms are assigned to which concepts. They care that their privacy is being
violated. And no, they certainly don't care about court opinions concerning
metadata not being data or call records not deserving privacy. The distinction
between wiretaps, pen registers, and any other bullshit they dream up is not
important to _most_ people, so dragging the conversation into the weeds over
the differences between the terms is not productive because it's a distinction
without a _meaningful_ difference (unless you're inclined to hassle privacy
advocates.)

~~~
darawk
Except we are actually discussing a technical legal matter. When discussing a
technical legal matter, definitions are important. You can say you're upset
about metadata collection, but that is a distinct issue from wiretapping.
Trying to justify imprecise terminology on the grounds that "people are upset"
is simply a tactic for muddying the waters. If your point is good, you can be
precise about it.

~~~
darkpuma
Most of us are not lawyers. If a lawyer is being imprecise with legal
terminology, then they need to be called on it promptly. If however a _non_
-lawyer is misusing terminology but their meaning is clear, correcting their
terminology is just derailing the conversation.

If somebody says _" That man assaulted me; he punched me right in the face"_
the correct response is _not_ _" Actually that's battery, not assault"_

(I don't know [or care] if that 'correction' is true or not, but it's one
that's been repeated online _ad nauseum_.)

~~~
lern_too_spel
You also don't care if the punch was warrantless or not. Here, we are
discussing warrantless wiretaps, which has a specific meaning. You don't get
to pick and choose which meanings you discard (wiretap) and which meanings you
keep (warrantless) because goalposts can be moved forever, and communication
becomes impossible.

------
sandworm101
9.2M? 145 people over 3 months? That's 9.2M / (145*90) = 700~ texts per PERSON
per DAY. That's insane. Even if each text goes to ever other person and is
double counted, that is still 17+ texts per day from each person. Are these
teenagers? Do drug dealers really send texts to dozens of people at once? We
have to be missing something.

~~~
zaroth
A halfway determined teenager probably sends over 700 texts an hour. I
wouldn’t be surprised to see rates upwards of 1,000 per hour for some users.

Average character count per text is probably low. Median character count could
be something like 3.

That’s all rank speculation on my part. Would be interesting to see actual
data on this though!

~~~
dredmorbius
11 a minute? One every 5 seconds? Sustained? For 24 hours/day, 7 days/wk, 4
weeks/mo, 3 months straight?

I somehow doubt that very much.

~~~
r3bl
> For 24 hours/day, 7 days/wk, 4 weeks/mo, 3 months straight?

The comment above reached a figure of 700 per day per person. For my teen
self, that's about two or three hours of conversation per day. It's certainly
sustainable for months. Hell, I was known as the outlier in my teen circles
because I liked to send longer messages (actually combining full sentences
into one message) from time to time.

~~~
dredmorbius
The comment I'm reading states 700/hr, up to 1000/hr. Not day.

That may not be what its author intended, but it's what they wrote. Twice.

~~~
zaroth
r3bl is correct. In the context of incredulity over someone sending 700 texts
per day, my point was that I’m sure there are many users who send over 700
texts in a single an hour.

Nowhere did I say that rate would be _sustained_ for 24 consecutive hours.

It is the ultimate in moving goalposts to take my response to a claim of
700/day being insane, to recast the debate as if it were over sending 17,000
texts per day.

~~~
dredmorbius
Pew's 2012 estimate, the most recent available, is 167 mean, 60 median,
texts/day for teens. Fewer than 20% send more than 200 texts/day. Again, the
likelihood that "many" exceed 700/day, let alone 700/hr, absent some bulk
multicasting method, is unsupported by plausibility or data.

[https://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/19/what-teens-do-with-
th...](https://www.pewinternet.org/2012/03/19/what-teens-do-with-their-
phones/)

~~~
zaroth
2012? Phhffaw. Dude, do you even text? </s>

But when did I ever say _many_?!

~~~
dredmorbius
Rereading your initial comment, that's strongly implied.

I think this horse is now dead, and or has come to enjoy the beating.

------
maxheadroom
What I take away from this is that the bar for warrants is either too low or
there's something afoot in the law enforcement sector.

4 x 30 (just easy rounding) = 120 days against 149 individuals.

This is not a small-scale surveillance operation and all of that time, money,
and effort amounted to zero arrests? Then what was the justification for the
warrant that was used to enact the wiretap, in the first place? " _We kind of
think that something maybe kind of sort is happening, potentially, with this
possible group of possibly known individuals..._ "?

This doesn't add-up.

Aren't warrants supposed to be used to investigate for evidence of crimes
where other evidence is presented with the warrant application that a crime
has possibly been committed and, thus, such gathering is necessary to further
collect information directly pertinent to the investigation?

This just sounds like rubber-stamping surveillance to _maybe_ catch
individuals that _may_ be involved in some _possibly_ nefarious actions that
some officers _suspect_ is going on but don't _really_ have anything else to
go on...

Otherwise, how can you go to a court and say, " _Based on 'x', we think these
149 individuals are involved in 'y' crime and we need to gather evidence in
support of that..._", waste so much time, resources, man-hours, etc. and
_still_ come up empty-handed; especially, when you were supposed to have
sufficient enough evidence against at least one individual to have the warrant
granted in the first place?

The way this unfolded, it seems like it was more of a fishing expedition than
anything worth-while and that is the most disconcerting part.

------
paxys
Shit like this is the reason everyone needs to use E2E encrypted messaging.

~~~
A2017U1
Doesn't do a thing for metadata. Average Australian has 15,000 datapoints
collected daily and stored for warrantless access by virtually any govt
department, most of it cellphone location.

------
viraptor
> three-month wiretap that collected 9.1 million text message from 45
> individuals

~2210 messages per person per day on average? (~138/day hour) That's either
really impressive, or something doesn't add up...

~~~
sandworm101
ya ... I got the math wrong. It is 149 people, not 45.

~~~
Thorrez
The article mentions 2 different wiretaps. One is 9.2M with 149 people, the
other is 9.1M with 45 people.

------
p4bl0
I've already said it but once again: I can't access this website at all on
mobile: I first land on an RGPD warning except that I can't refuse cookies and
tracking directly from it so I need to follow a link, which doesn't have any
settings either but un bunch of other links, and it continues. After the tenth
link followed I just gave up. Fuck you Techcrunch, fuck you Oath, fuck you
Verizon Media, fuck you Yahoo Consent.

~~~
cameronbrown
Tracking consent needs to be built in at the browser level.

------
bandrami
9.1 million of them were "u up?"

------
xenospn
So stop using Android or switch to WhatsApp. Simple.

~~~
viraptor
What does Android have to do with wiretaps?

~~~
xenospn
Android phones send SMS messages.

~~~
viraptor
So does every mobile phone.

