Police used apparently illegal wiretaps to make hundreds of arrests
Source: USA Today
RIVERSIDE, Calif. Prosecutors in the Los Angeles suburb responsible for a huge share of the nations wiretaps almost certainly violated federal law when they authorized widespread eavesdropping that police used to make more than 300 arrests and seize millions of dollars in cash and drugs throughout the USA.
The violations could undermine the legality of as many as 738 wiretaps approved in Riverside County, Calif., since the middle of 2013, an investigation by USA TODAY and The Desert Sun, based on interviews and court records, has found. Prosecutors reported that those taps, often conducted by federal drug investigators, intercepted phone calls and text messages by more than 52,000 people.
... In Riverside County a Los Angeles suburb whose court and prosecutors approved almost one of every five U.S. wiretaps last year the district attorney turned the job of reviewing the applications over to lower-level lawyers, interviews and court records show. That practice almost certainly violated the federal wiretapping law and could jeopardize prosecutors ability to use the surveillance in court.
... That also creates a legal problem for Riversides massive wiretapping operation, which had come under scrutiny from Justice Department lawyers. Last week, USA TODAY and The Desert Sun reported that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration had secretly helped turn the county into the nations wiretap capital, even though federal prosecutors repeatedly warned that the surveillance orders violated a separate part of the wiretapping law and would not withstand a legal challenge.
Read more: http://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2015/11/19/riverside-county-wiretaps-violated-federal-law/76064908/
sakabatou
(42,176 posts)christx30
(6,241 posts)billhicks76
(5,082 posts)I they really want to persuade people to keep any wiretapping laws then the first thing that should be done is legalizing ALL drugs. That way in most cases it will only be used the intended way. Of course there will still be blackmail abuse of the wiretaps.