The sinister truth about what they do with our children's fingerprints

By SUE REID

Fionna Elliot does not look like a firebrand. A hard-working mother, she has never had the time or the interest to dabble in politics.

Yet when the local primary school wrote to her saying they were about to fingerprint her son Alexander, eight, and daughter Jessica, only six, she was furious.

The 29-year-old housewife from Balby in Doncaster, South Yorkshire, saw it as a dangerous step towards a Big Brother society.

She didn't want her children fingerprinted and she marched off to Waverley School, five minutes from the family's home, to protest to the headmistress.

"The school said they were taking the thumb print of every child," Fiona explained at her neat, semi-detached home this week.

"The new electronic mapping system would allow children to borrow books from the library.

"The headmistress said it would be exciting for the pupils and help them develop a love of books and reading."

Each child's fingerprint would replace their library card.

Placing their fingerprint on a scanner would open their computer file with records of the books they had borrowed.

The argument is that this would dramatically simplify record-keeping.

But Fiona Elliott is not prepared to accept it.

"I told the headmistress that the biometric data could easily be stolen by identity thieves or used by the State for some dubious purpose," she says.

"My children are not terrorists or criminals and their fingerprints should not be collected at such a young age."

If some choose to write this off as alarmist, she doesn't care.

For she is one of many parents appalled by what they see as another deeply worrying inroad by the State into our personal liberty.

Britain is already the most snooped-on society in the world.

It has more than a fifth of the world's CCTV cameras.

One day all our NHS records may be on a national computer accessible by thousands of health workers.

Ministers have suggested that every British subject should have their DNA placed on a national database.

And already, the State has the DNA records of nearly a million children, some as young as five.

Now the Government is actively encouraging cash-strapped schools - short of teachers, sports facilities and even books - to spend £20,000 or more on fingerprinting systems.

In the short time since the practice began unannounced in 2001, nearly 6,000 pupils have had their 'dabs' taken throughout the country.

Every week another 20 schools join the list.

So concerned are parents that, backed by academics and experts on privacy, they have launched a campaign against the fingerprinting of children in schools.

The parents say the fingerprinting is 'softening up' children to prepare them for the national introduction of ID cards and to encourage them to hand over precious biometric details without a second thought.

They point out that no other country in Europe routinely fingerprints children and that even communist China has abandoned plans for fingerprinting school pupils because it breaches human rights.

They quote the Minister for Schools and Learning, Jim Knight, who this summer admitted that the police can simply help themselves to the children's fingerprints if they are trying to solve a crime.

How many others, the parents ask, will have access to the fingerprint databases?

But those schools that have introduced the practice say there is nothing to worry about.

The data, unique to every pupil, will never be stolen or spied on, they argue.

This is simply a safe, easy and fun way for the children to take home library books or buy lunch at the school canteen. It does away with pieces of paper and dinner vouchers.

It saves time.

Parents are unconvinced. Some, among them a Suffolk filmmaker called Jonathan Adams, are considering legal action to stop schools in their tracks.

"Litigation may be the only way forward," he says.

"We fear they are in breach of the Human Rights Act, the Data Protection Act and the European Commission laws that safeguard the child.

"We have sought initial advice from lawyers.

"If we won, the individual schools would have to pay a hefty price for ignoring parents' wishes.

"Many have introduced the fingerprinting of pupils without even asking permission from families."

He adds: "The law says the collection of personal biometric data must be proportionate to the issue for which it is being used.

"How can it be proportionate to fingerprint a child so he can borrow a library book or order a hot lunch?

"The other question is what is happening to the fingerprints after the child leaves the school.

"The schools insist the data is wiped from the system.

"But you can't just press the delete button.

"It has to be professionally cleansed and none of the teachers seem to know that."

Mr Adams's concern is similar to many others heard by the Mail during an investigation into the growth of fingerprinting in schools, which was sparked when a reader wrote in with an alarming tale.

She said 11-year- old children were being told to place their thumbs in a biometric mapping machine at a school in Carmarthenshire, Wales.

When parents objected and began to ask questions of the teachers, they were told that children could not use the library if they did not use the mapping system and the permission of parents was not needed anyway.

Furthermore, the teachers insisted that the fingerprint data would be absolutely safe in the school system.

But just how secure is the data from abuse? The schools claim that encrypting technology makes it completely inaccessible to outsiders.

When a child places his thumb or finger on the electronic mapping pad which scans his print, it is transformed into what is called an unintelligible algorithm.

This is a string of numbers, stored on a biometric template, which is held as a code for the child's actual fingerprint.

Crucially, the schools, the education authorities and the Government say it is very difficult to convert this code back to the original thumb or fingerprint.

But not impossible.

So if the right computer geek gets hold of the code for a child's fingerprint, he should be able to create the original fingerprint from it.

So what are the dangers if a child's finger or thumb print is recreated by a hacker?

The simple answer is identity theft. Biometric information such as fingerprints cannot be changed like a PIN number, which is why, in the future, they will be used to authenticate passports or bank accounts.

The print of a seven-year-old boy, for instance, could be pinched from a school computer and then sold to someone who wanted to have the fake identity of a British citizen.

The boy grows up and, at 19, tries to open a bank account.

But he is told he already has one and he is in the red so the answer is no.

At 22, he applies for a mortgage only to be refused because he already has a 20-year loan.

At the register office he asks for a marriage licence, but then finds he already has a wife.

The identity thief has been there first.

Even more perturbing, perhaps, is the potential for mix-ups between innocent people and criminals - for the police, the security services and governments all over the world use such coded algorithms to keep the fingerprints of criminals.

As one IT security consultant in Britain, Brian Drury, said recently: "If a child has never touched a fingerprint scanner, there is zero probability of being incorrectly investigated for a crime.

"Once a child has touched a scanner they will be at the mercy of the algorithm [stored in the school computer] for the rest of their lives."

It is these issues that worry the parents. Jonathan Adams explains how his son started secondary school in Hadley, Suffolk, a year ago.

Within a week he had been fingerprinted.

"It turned out that the school had been using biometric fingerprinting for five years," says Mr Adams.

"They have never considered asking the parents for permission.

"When I objected to what had happened to my son, they sent out a consent form saying it was all fine and dandy and if you want to be awkward you can say no.

"In theory my son's fingerprints have now been removed from the system. But these are ordinary computers.

"They are networked with other schools, they are linked with the local authority, and in turn they are connected with the wider internet.

"I know about IT. Any geek in a backroom with cutting-edge software or hardware can get in to copy the biometric data of any child or all of them."

One of the fiercest campaigners against child fingerprinting is David Clouter.

He has set up a website called Leave Them Kids Alone which is pressing schools to ask permission-from parents before they take the biometric details of pupils.

The businessman acted after his 11-year-old daughter announced one evening that her school, St Matthews in Cambridge, was planning to use fingerprint scans instead of library cards.

David and his wife Katarzyna didn't believe it.

They found the letter confirming the new library system in their daughter Marysia's bag - and discovered they had no say in the matter of whether or not the system was introduced.

"Schools send out consent slips for just about anything, from allowing popcorn during cinema trips to whether we can take pictures of the school play at the end of term," Mr Clouter says, "but they didn't plan to ask the parents about taking their children's fingerprints."

Up to now, the Government has refused to say if the fingerprinting of children is legal and this is what parents may now test in the courts.

Roberta Smart is a housewife and mother of two girls, Kelsey, aged nine, and Harley, six.

They go to a primary school in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, which has introduced a thumb scanner so children can use the library.

She and her partner, Alistair, have written to the school forbidding their daughters' participation.

"I believe that this is part of a Government plan to soften up children for ID cards,' says Roberta, who is reading for a university degree.

"It is grooming the pupils at a very young age to accept that taking their personal biometric details and storing them on computers is normal.

"The school says it is doing nothing wrong and there is nothing to hide. But we are moving closer and closer to a Big Brother State.

"What could a child's fingerprints be used for in ten years' time?"

Her views are shared by Dr Sandra Leaton Gray, director of studies in sociology of education at Homerton College, Cambridge University.

She believes the fingerprinting is dangerous.

"Children are being encouraged to become compliant and passive about giving out their biometric details," she says.

"Essentially, they are being softened up for later life.

"People mix up everyday ID, such as drivers' licences, with this kind of information. It is very different.

"Some of the companies supplying the finger mapping systems in our schools have connections with the American intelligence services and military operating at Guantanamo Bay and should not be allowed access to our pupils."

Professor Ross Anderson, a Cambridge University professor and expert on privacy, agrees.

He told the Mail this week: "Britain is out of line with the rest of Europe, where the fingerprinting of schoolchildren does not happen.

"It is a slippery slope. Certainly, the pupils are being softened up and led to believe that giving their personal biometric data to the authorities is normal behaviour."

Few are more sure of that than Fiona Elliott, the mother of Alexander and Jessica in Doncaster.

She is just relieved that her children have escaped being fingerprinted by a whisker.

"Our primary school's motto is "Living, Learning and Laughing Together",' she said ruefully this week.

"Yet this is the same place that they tried to fingerprint my son and daughter. How can that be right?"

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=486930&in_page_id=1770&in_a_source=

Citizens Arrested For Commiting FREE SPEECH in Washington D.C

At pro Armageddon rally, people were arrested for reading the U.S. Constitution.

Recorded and narrated by WHYNotNews

'A Coup Has Occurred'

Daniel Ellsberg, the heroic former Defense Department analyst and Army officer who shared the secret Pentagon Papers history of the Vietnam War with the American people, talked about the looming war against Iran, and the American police state, at American University on September 20.

I think nothing has higher priority than averting an attack on Iran, which I think will be accompanied by a further change in our way of governing here that in effect will convert us into what I would call a police state. If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.

Will there be anything left for NSA to increase its surveillance of us? … They may be to the limit of their technical capability now, or they may not. But if they’re not now they will be after another 9/11.

And I would say after the Iranian retaliation to an American attack on Iran, you will then see an increased attack on Iran – an escalation – which will be also accompanied by a total suppression of dissent in this country, including detention camps.

It’s a little hard for me to distinguish the two contingencies; they could come together. Another 9/11 or an Iranian attack in which Iran’s reaction against Israel, against our shipping, against our troops in Iraq above all, possibly in this country, will justify the full panoply of measures that have been prepared now, legitimized, and to some extent written into law. …

This is an unusual gang, even for Republicans. [But] I think that the successors to this regime are not likely to roll back the assault on the Constitution. They will take advantage of it, they will exploit it.

Will Hillary Clinton as president decide to turn off NSA after the last five years of illegal surveillance? Will she deprive her administration her ability to protect United States citizens from possible terrorism by blinding herself and deafening herself to all that NSA can provide? I don’t think so.

Unless this somehow, by a change in our political climate, of a radical change, unless this gets rolled back in the next year or two before a new administration comes in – and there’s no move to do this at this point – unless that happens I don’t see it happening under the next administration, whether Republican or Democratic.

The Next Coup

Let me simplify this and not just to be rhetorical: A coup has occurred. I woke up the other day realizing, coming out of sleep, that a coup has occurred. It’s not just a question that a coup lies ahead with the next 9/11. That’s the next coup, that completes the first.

The last five years have seen a steady assault on every fundamental of our Constitution, … what the rest of the world looked at for the last 200 years as a model and experiment to the rest of the world – in checks and balances, limited government, Bill of Rights, individual rights protected from majority infringement by the Congress, an independent judiciary, the possibility of impeachment.

There have been violations of these principles by many presidents before. Most of the specific things that Bush has done in the way of illegal surveillance and other matters were done under my boss Lyndon Johnson in the Vietnam War: the use of CIA, FBI, NSA against Americans.

I could go through a list going back before this century to Lincoln’s suspension of habeas corpus in the Civil War, and before that the Alien and Sedition Acts in the 18th century. I think that none of those presidents were in fact what I would call quite precisely the current administration: domestic enemies of the Constitution.

I think that none of these presidents with all their violations, which were impeachable had they been found out at the time and in nearly every case their violations were not found out until they were out of office so we didn’t have the exact challenge that we have today.

That was true with the first term of Nixon and certainly of Johnson, Kennedy and others. They were impeachable, they weren’t found out in time, but I think it was not their intention to, in the crisis situations that they felt justified their actions, to change our form of government.

It is increasingly clear with each new book and each new leak that comes out, that Richard Cheney and his now chief of staff David Addington have had precisely that in mind since at least the early 70s. Not just since 1992, not since 2001, but have believed in Executive government, single-branch government under an Executive president – elected or not – with unrestrained powers. They did not believe in restraint.

When I say this I’m not saying they are traitors. I don’t think they have in mind allegiance to some foreign power or have a desire to help a foreign power. I believe they have in their own minds a love of this country and what they think is best for this country – but what they think is best is directly and consciously at odds with what the Founders of this country and Constitution thought.

They believe we need a different kind of government now, an Executive government essentially, rule by decree, which is what we’re getting with signing statements. Signing statements are talked about as line-item vetoes which is one [way] of describing them which are unconstitutional in themselves, but in other ways are just saying the president says “I decide what I enforce. I decide what the law is. I legislate.”

It’s [the same] with the military commissions, courts that are under the entire control of the Executive Branch, essentially of the president. A concentration of legislative, judicial, and executive powers in one branch, which is precisely what the Founders meant to avert, and tried to avert and did avert to the best of their ability in the Constitution.

Founders Had It Right

Now I’m referring to that as a crisis right now not just because it is a break in tradition but because I believe in my heart and from my experience that on this point the Founders had it right.

It’s not just “our way of doing things” – it was a crucial perception on the corruption of power to anybody including Americans. On procedures and institutions that might possibly keep that power under control because the alternative was what we have just seen, wars like Vietnam, wars like Iraq, wars like the one coming.

That brings me to the second point. This Executive Branch, under specifically Bush and Cheney, despite opposition from most of the rest of the branch, even of the cabinet, clearly intends a war against Iran which even by imperialist standards, standards in other words which were accepted not only by nearly everyone in the Executive Branch but most of the leaders in Congress. The interests of the empire, the need for hegemony, our right to control and our need to control the oil of the Middle East and many other places. That is consensual in our establishment. …

But even by those standards, an attack on Iran is insane. And I say that quietly, I don’t mean it to be heard as rhetoric. Of course it’s not only aggression and a violation of international law, a supreme international crime, but it is by imperial standards, insane in terms of the consequences.

Does that make it impossible? No, it obviously doesn’t, it doesn’t even make it unlikely.

That is because two things come together that with the acceptance for various reasons of the Congress – Democrats and Republicans – and the public and the media, we have freed the White House – the president and the vice president – from virtually any restraint by Congress, courts, media, public, whatever.

And on the other hand, the people who have this unrestrained power are crazy. Not entirely, but they have crazy beliefs.

And the question is what then, what can we do about this? We are heading towards an insane operation. It is not certain. It is likely. … I want to try to be realistic myself here, to encourage us to do what we must do, what is needed to be done with the full recognition of the reality. Nothing is impossible.

What I’m talking about in the way of a police state, in the way of an attack on Iran is not certain. Nothing is certain, actually. However, I think it is probable, more likely than not, that in the next 15, 16 months of this administration we will see an attack on Iran. Probably. Whatever we do.

And … we will not succeed in moving Congress probably, and Congress probably will not stop the president from doing this. And that’s where we’re heading. That’s a very ugly, ugly prospect.

However, I think it’s up to us to work to increase that small perhaps – anyway not large – possibility and probability to avert this within the next 15 months, aside from the effort that we have to make for the rest of our lives.

Restoring the Republic

Getting back the constitutional government and improving it will take a long time. And I think if we don’t get started now, it won’t be started under the next administration.

Getting out of Iraq will take a long time. Averting Iran and averting a further coup in the face of a 9/11, another attack, is for right now, it can’t be put off. It will take a kind of political and moral courage of which we have seen very little…

We have a really unusual concentration here and in this audience, of people who have in fact changed their lives, changed their position, lost their friends to a large extent, risked and experienced being called terrible names, “traitor,” “weak on terrorism” – names that politicians will do anything to avoid being called.

How do we get more people in the government and in the public at large to change their lives now in a crisis in a critical way? How do we get Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid for example? What kinds of pressures, what kinds of influences can be brought to bear to get Congress to do their jobs? It isn’t just doing their jobs. Getting them to obey their oaths of office.

I took an oath many times, an oath of office as a Marine lieutenant, as an official in the Defense Department, as an official in the State Department as a Foreign Service officer. A number of times I took an oath of office which is the same oath office taken by every member of Congress and every official in the United States and every officer in the United States armed services.

And that oath is not to a Commander in Chief, which is not mentioned. It is not to a Führer. It is not even to superior officers. The oath is precisely to protect and uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Now that is an oath I violated every day for years in the Defense Department without realizing it when I kept my mouth shut when I knew the public was being lied into a war as they were lied into Iraq, as they are being lied into war in Iran.

I knew that I had the documents that proved it, and I did not put it out then. I was not obeying my oath which I eventually came to do.

I’ve often said that Lt. Ehren Watada – who still faces trial for refusing to obey orders to deploy to Iraq which he correctly perceives to be an unconstitutional and aggressive war – is the single officer in the United States armed services who is taking seriously upholding his oath.

The president is clearly violating that oath, of course. Everybody under him who understands what is going on and there are myriad, are violating their oaths. And that’s the standard that I think we should be asking of people.

Congressional Courage

On the Democratic side, on the political side, I think we should be demanding of our Democratic leaders in the House and Senate – and frankly of the Republicans – that it is not their highest single absolute priority to be reelected or to maintain a Democratic majority so that Pelosi can still be Speaker of the House and Reid can be in the Senate, or to increase that majority.

I’m not going to say that for politicians they should ignore that, or that they should do something else entirely, or that they should not worry about that.

Of course that will be and should be a major concern of theirs, but they’re acting like it’s their sole concern. Which is business as usual. “We have a majority, let’s not lose it, let’s keep it. Let’s keep those chairmanships.” Exactly what have those chairmanships done for us to save the Constitution in the last couple of years?

I am shocked by the Republicans today that I read in the Washington Post who yesterday threatened a filibuster if we … get back habeas corpus. The ruling out of habeas corpus with the help of the Democrats did not get us back to George the First it got us back to before King John 700 years ago in terms of counter-revolution.

We need some way, and Ann Wright has one way, of sitting in, in Conyers office and getting arrested. Ray McGovern has been getting arrested, pushed out the other day for saying the simple words “swear him in” when it came to testimony.

I think we’ve got to somehow get home to them [in Congress] that this is the time for them to uphold the oath, to preserve the Constitution, which is worth struggling for in part because it’s only with the power that the Constitution gives Congress responding to the public, only with that can we protect the world from mad men in power in the White House who intend an attack on Iran.

And the current generation of American generals and others who realize that this will be a catastrophe have not shown themselves – they might be people who in their past lives risked their bodies and their lives in Vietnam or elsewhere, like [Colin] Powell, and would not risk their career or their relation with the president to the slightest degree.

That has to change. And it’s the example of people like those up here who somehow brought home to our representatives that they as humans and as citizens have the power to do likewise and find in themselves the courage to protect this country and protect the world. Thank you.

September 27, 2007

Daniel Ellsberg is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national uproar in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, the US military’s account of activities during the Vietnam War, to the New York Times. The release awakened the American people to how much they had been deceived by their own government about the war. Ellsberg has continued as a political activist, giving lecture tours and speaking out about current events.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig7/ellsberg2.html

Child ID program draws hundreds

Seeing her aunt go missing for three days was all too frightening for Keisha Boog. She was eventually found and was OK, but Boog said she would do all that's necessary to prevent a similar disappearance. Yesterday she took her sons, 1-year-old William and 7-year-old Austin, to Byerly Ford-Nissan off Dixie Highway where police were filing fingerprints and handing out identification cards to children. "We hope this will help if anything happens to them," Boog said. "We don't want another" fright. Close to 300 children had their fingerprints scanned and photos taken. The children's fingerprints and photos, along with their weight and height, were also logged onto an encrypted disk that only the FBI can read. Parents were also given kits that contained DNA vials that would keep DNA for up to 100 years and information on child safety regarding lead and ink poisoning. Around 500 people showed up for the event, which lasted throughout the afternoon. It was the fourth year that the dealership had served as the host, said sales manager Bob Copas.

Amanda Oakley, a DNA LifePrint representative, explained how fingerprint scanning works to 6-year-old Kara Miller during yesterday's program at Byerly Ford-Nissan on Dixie Highway. (By Daarel Burnette II, The Courier-Journal)

"If a child goes missing, this allows the police to get their information out to the media in a timely manner," Copas said.

Six-year-old Pia Cuesta and her brother, Pidion Cuesta, 8, said they spoke with the police officers about not talking with strangers and staying safe.

"I learned to stay close to my parents," Pia said.

Shively training officer Eric Brooke said when children are missing, stressed parents often can't remember simple things about them.

"This information becomes very helpful," he said.

Tracy Frost brought her 5-year-old daughter, Abigail Booth, to have her fingerprints scanned for the first time.

"I'm always worried something will happen to her," Frost said. "This makes me feel a little safer."

http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070923/NEWS01/709230490/1008/NEWS01

The rest of Britain must follow in the footsteps of the Scots when it comes to DNA record storage

The title of this article sounds like a total Dictation to me and guess what ? You might aswell say we are being run by a Dictatorship. I mean, who speaks for the many ? What you say goes right ....You can read this heap of bullshit here

http://society.guardian.co.uk/crimeandpunishment/comment/0,,2172362,00.html

Wiretaps on the rise nationally since 9/11

Investigators have tapped more phones, listened to more people and recorded more conversations since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks not only in terrorism probes, but in traditional criminal cases, too.

State and federal courts authorized 8,122 wiretaps for domestic criminal investigations in the first five years after Sept. 11, 2001, marking a nearly 25 percent increase over the previous five years. Judges denied wiretap applications only twice.

Those figures do not include the controversial warrantless wiretaps that are backed by the Bush administration as a terrorism-fighting tool. Nor do they include thousands of wiretaps in which a secret court approves warrants in counterterrorism and espionage cases.

The increase in criminal wiretaps, which require warrants, matches a climate since the attacks in which law-enforcement and counterterrorism officials have blurred the lines between combating terrorism and conventional crime.

Homeland Security grants have been used for crime-fighting, states are more involved in counterterrorism and officials have suggested links between narcotics and terrorism, though they have not prosecuted such cases.

The rise in eavesdropping has civil libertarians concerned about an erosion of privacy and civil rights without any clear benefit.

"There is a pattern of a steady expansion of wiretapping without a corresponding growth in effectiveness, sweeping in innocent people along the way," said Kevin Bankston, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The San Francisco group keeps tabs on how the government uses or could abuse technology.

An Arizona Republic analysis of court data suggests declining effectiveness in criminal wiretaps at a time when the federal government has been strengthening its counterterrorism-wiretap powers and increasingly shrouding new surveillance programs in secrecy.

"The public should take notice because we've given law enforcement all these resources to make us safer," said Mike German, a retired FBI agent who became a counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union's Washington headquarters.

"What's happening with law enforcement is, since 9/11, they have been building the infrastructure for wiretaps to be the method of enforcement for the future. If it's not working, we should stop it right now. This is an alarm bell."

Historically effective

Prosecutors say, and statistics show, that wiretaps have been extremely valuable in dismantling crime syndicates. Wires helped weaken the Mafia. More than 47,000 criminals have been convicted in conventional wiretap cases in the past 20 years, according to data reported by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.

In Phoenix, a major bust this month involving a suspected money-laundering operation at a shuttle service to Rocky Point relied on wiretap evidence.

Congress authorized wiretaps in the 1968 crime bill.

In fighting crime, U.S. investigators historically got half of the wiretap approvals, but in recent years state and local agencies got twice as many wiretaps as their federal counterparts.

In Arizona, investigators got 17 wiretaps last year. The 59 Arizona wiretaps since 2002 mark a 28 percent increase over pre-9/11 levels.

Investigators have to get a court order to eavesdrop. State, county or federal prosecutors submit applications to judges.

In those applications, investigators have to swear under oath that other techniques have failed, are likely to fail or are too dangerous.

They have to show probable cause that a specific crime is being committed by specific targets and that the wiretap of a specific phone or device will uncover proof.

For years, investigators listened to suspects on home, office or pay phones. Last year, more than 90 percent of intercepts involved cellphones, up from two-thirds in 2000.

Investigators can only listen to incriminating dialogue. When conversations turn innocent, eavesdroppers are supposed to switch off after a few minutes.

Expensive tool

Court data show one conversation in four yields evidence usable in court, a sign to German and other civil libertarians that investigators are snooping on too many innocent people.

Transcripts show that suspects intersperse conversations with personal exchanges and coded business banter to throw off investigators.

Court statistics suggest investigators have been diligent in ensuring their evidence holds up in court. Since 2001, defense attorneys have filed 294 motions to get eavesdropping evidence thrown out. With 62 motions pending, only six have been granted.

"I think that's a very telling statistic," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Beth Pfiester, who handles wire applications on drug cases in Phoenix. "Prosecutors aren't going to go through the headache of preparing the paperwork if the case isn't going to meet the standards."

The cases are expensive. On average last year, a wiretap cost $53,000 nationally. For wiretaps obtained by the Arizona Attorney General's Office, the average cost was close to $300,000. Those figures don't include the cost of police work and prosecutors' time.

Jane McLaughlin, who oversees wire applications for the attorney general's drug-crimes unit, says that the money pays off. She hasn't lost a wire case in 10 years.

Conviction rate down

The official conviction rate doesn't measure what happens to people who are arrested but never charged.

Nationally, the number of people convicted within three years of a wiretap has fallen 18 percent since Sept. 11, 2001, while the number of people arrested slipped 8 percent, the court data analysis shows.

That three-year window is significant because almost all arrests and five-sixths of the convictions are wrapped up in that time, an analysis of the court data shows.

Typically, wiretap cases involve lengthy investigations. Agents don't make a bust until they are nearly certain they have enough for a conviction. Nationally, half of those arrested in wiretap cases are convicted, court data show.

"It's an effective, effective tool. That's why that statistic about convictions is so surprising," said Paul Charlton, former U.S. attorney for Arizona.

He attributes the drop in conviction rates to a focus on kingpins, meaning less important conspirators who are swept up are often let go.

"If you pick up 30 defendants on a wiretap, if your resources are limited, you may go after the core 10 people," Charlton said.

That's because it's not worth lengthy, expensive surveillance of suspects who play a peripheral role and would only get relatively minor sentences.

That people who are never prosecuted are being listened to by investigators has civil libertarians alarmed.

"Yes, the technique is useful, but it remains highly intrusive, and it requires controls that have been consistently weakened at the judicial and legislative levels and weakened by misleading claims by the government about its effectiveness," said James Dempsey, policy director for the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Democracy and Technology.

http://www.azcentral.com