Surveillance Rising

I stole this graph of federal pen registers (who called who when) and phone taps (what was said) from here.

That is just official requests, on the record. It doesn’t factor in unofficial taps on lines they happen to have access to, and want to listen in on, to see what is going on. I’ll bet those make this look like a decline.

This is not just happening with taps and pen registers. Official technical surveillance installed publicly, unofficial technical surveillance installed publicly, official technical surveillance installed privately, unofficial technical surveillance installed privately, official in-person vehicle and foot surveillance operations, and unofficial in-person vehicle and foot units and operations are also all increasing funding, manpower, and deployment.

Mark my words, there is more going on with surveillance than just a higher terrorism risk or more crime. Somebody thinks something huge is coming, and they are building something huge to deal with it.