Here is how much you are paying (in tax dollars) for the government to spy on you.

Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2013, 03:51 PM - Edit history (2)

This report covers wiretapping orders by US courts. It does not include anything related to NSA’s electronic surveillance, FBI ‘administrative subpoenas’ to Google / Facebook, the US Postal Service examination of people’s physical mail, or FISA's secret court nonsense.

http://www.uscourts.gov/Statistics/WiretapReports/wiretap-report-2012.aspx

Details from the Report:

Riverside County, California is the most spied-on county in the United States

Followed by Clark County, Nevada

3,395 wiretaps were ordered, averaging 29.03 days each

The average cost of a wiretap order last year was $50,452

The highest cost was $872,841 for a Federal wiretap in the Eastern district of Washington

87.39% of these wiretap orders were connected to drug-related charges

Only 18.19% of these wiretaps actually led to a conviction

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/10/government-wiretap_n_3571422.html

AT&T, for example, imposes a $325 "activation fee" for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. Smaller carriers Cricket and U.S. Cellular charge only about $250 per wiretap. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that, according to industry disclosures made last year to Congressman Edward Markey.

Meanwhile, email records like those amassed by the National Security Agency through a program revealed by former NSA systems analyst Edward Snowden probably were collected for free or very cheaply. Facebook says it doesn't charge the government for access. And while Microsoft, Yahoo and Google won't say how much they charge, the American Civil Liberties Union found that email records can be turned over for as little as $25.

Industry says it doesn't profit from the hundreds of thousands of government eavesdropping requests it receives each year, and civil liberties groups want businesses to charge. They worry that government surveillance will become too cheap as companies automate their responses. And if companies gave away customer records for free, wouldn't that encourage uncalled-for surveillance?