If Wiretapping Was So Vital, Feds Would Pay Up

January 10, 2008 – 4:35 pm

What’s worse, eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant or losing evidence acquired via this unconstitutional search for unpaid phone bills? Where is the FBI conducting this operation, in a fraternity house? We have lost our civil liberties and privacy to insecure control freaks and are no safer today than we were on 9/11. Fellow Americans, please do the rest of us a favor and stop asking yourself who you would rather have a beer with when you enter the voting booth (because unless you contribute over $100,000 to a candidate, you’re not going to have one with any of them).

The lesson that we have all learned from the past seven years is that competence (not personality) matters.

Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.

A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

In at least one case, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation “was halted due to untimely payment,” the audit found. FISA wiretaps are used in the government’s most sensitive and secretive criminal investigations, and allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies.

“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.