MSNBC: Government Wiretaps up 75 percent

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Government wiretaps, searches up 75 percent
Increase follows expanded powers for terror investigation

Updated: 8:19 p.m. ET April 1, 2005


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7361416/

WASHINGTON - The government requested and won approval for a record number of special warrants last year for secret wiretaps and searches of suspected terrorists and spies, 75 percent more than in 2000, the Bush administration disclosed Friday.

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Since passage of the Patriot Act, the FBI can use such warrants in investigations that aren’t mostly focused on foreign intelligence.

Operating with permission from a secretive U.S. court that meets regularly at Justice headquarters, the FBI has used such warrants to break into homes, offices, hotel rooms and automobiles, install hidden cameras, search luggage and eavesdrop on telephone conversations. Agents also have pried into safe deposit boxes, watched from afar with video cameras and binoculars and intercepted e-mails.

Details about some FBI surveillance efforts last year emerge from court records spread across different cases. But only a fraction of such warrants each year result in any kind of public disclosure, so little is known outside classified circles about how they work.

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The Justice Department acknowledged the search as part of a lawsuit Mayfield has filed against the U.S. government in which he contends his rights were violated by his arrest and by the investigation against him.

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