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With a single wiretap, police collected 9.2 million text messages – TechCrunch
For four months in 2018, authorities in Texas collected more than 9.2 million messages under a single court-authorized wiretap order, newly released figures show.
The wiretap, granted by a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, was granted as part of a narcotics investigation and became the federal wiretap with the most intercepts in 2018, according to the government’s annual wiretap report.
Little is known about the case, except that 149 individuals involved in the case were targeted by the wiretap. The wiretap expired last year, allowing the judiciary to disclose the case.
To date, no arrests have been made
Trailing behind it was another narcotics investigation in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania saw police obtain a three-month wiretap that collected 9.1 million text message from 45 individuals. No arrests were made either.
The two cases represent the largest wiretap cases seen in years.
[...] But the overall number of wiretaps authorized and subsequent convictions “fell sharply” in 2018, the U.S. Courts said in its annual transparency report.
A total of 2,937 wiretaps were authorized in 2018, down 22% on the year prior. The report also said that number of wiretaps using encryption went up, rendering the wiretap ineffective.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by looorg on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:18PM (14 children)
I don't claim any in depth knowledge about the world of drug dealing but if it's 9.1 million messages among 45 people (in just four months) that is a lot of messages per day/hour per person (it's about 70 messages per hour every hour (24h per day) per person involved for four months). It might even put some of the prolific messengers to shame. I can't imagine this is all internal messaging for some sort of organizational issues but it must be people ordering drugs, doesn't it? Then it becomes I guess more believable.
(Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:29PM (4 children)
Still has to be more than one person working each tapped line. That is more than a text per minute 24/7/365. Who knew the modern drug dealer is suffering away at the phones as bad as a call center tech.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:39PM
Or they break that first cardinal rule of drug dealing (don't get high on your own supply) and are staying awake four days on end.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday July 02 2019, @12:59PM (2 children)
I also wondered about what seems an awfully high rate of texting. Maybe the users were purposely flooding their phones with irrelevant texts in order to better hide the real messages. Some sort of modified auto-responder could do that. Of course the fake messages would have to be hard to tell apart from the real ones.
I've also heard they've used coded messaging. Talk about sales and deliveries of vacuum cleaners so that anyone wiretapping the conversation couldn't prove they were really talking drug business.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:23PM (1 child)
Talk about sales and deliveries of vacuum cleaners...
May as well make a survey... Which brand is the most popular?
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @10:39PM
I like my eurika bag vacuum ok.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:03PM
Think of each text like a sentence
or phrase
Instead of using punctuatin you just send a new text
It's more like speech than an email or letter
🤗
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2019, @01:06PM (3 children)
The only way those numbers make sense is if they are also capturing messages that do not involve people named on the warrant.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:08PM (2 children)
As below, multiple phones purchased by the same individual on a single warrant, or perhaps multiple phone numbers believed to be part of the network, maybe. I hope it wasn't a "blank check" warrant, but doesn't have to be that way and still get multiple phones involved in the warrant AFAIK.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 02 2019, @06:07PM (1 child)
But... over 1600 messages a day? That's not a single person, maybe that's a single person's collection of phones being used by employees, but I didn't see anything about the warrant being issued for 45 drug lords and all their known associates....
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday July 03 2019, @02:31PM
It may have been edited into the summary, but it [now] says above, "149 individuals involved in the case were targeted by the wiretap."
The number is still pretty huge. 9,100,000 [msgs] / 149 [people] / 120 [days] / 12 [hours each day] = 42 messages per hour per individual for those 12 hours.
On the other hand, we (or at least I) have no idea how dealers use their cell phones and might message one another. Is it the principal way they communicate? Were it I, I would be using the thing all the time and throwing out all kinds of messages as chaff just to try and confuse anyone trying to follow me and I might split my communications between two phones (send messages on one, receive on another). Then again, it wouldn't be I in any event. Apropos of nothing, I remember when I drove cab trying to pick someone up at a seedy motel, going inside and hearing someone chatting away on their cell in another hall about how many 8-balls they could get at what price. Then the person turned the corner and our eyes met - he very quickly scanned me and determined I wasn't a threat. That was ancient history, before text messaging was even possible.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:06PM (3 children)
35 per hour, as it could be 2-way (or more) communication counting both sent and received, and responses do not have to be synchronous. Divide by another factor for multiple parties in the message, too, I'd think (I send a message to three people, that's three messages. An inbound return may be just one)
I send to you the word, "apple".
But then say, "no, banana"
Then, "3 bananas".
3 messages in ten seconds or less.
I've had days where I've sent/received way more than 70 messages in one hour although I'm no drug dealer.
Really not sure of the legality, but if they phrased the warrant to say, "Any phone(s) owned by XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX or purchased with Credit Card number YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY", where that's someone procuring them as logistics for a network and you may suddenly reduce the number by 10 or 20 to different phones, as well. The telephone wasn't even invented when the framers set forth the Constitution, and my read on it is that procedures radically had to change not only in the cell phone era but that of cheap prepaid burner phones, also.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday July 02 2019, @02:11PM (1 child)
On third thought, could "45 people" mean 45 different phones. (And if they each had 2 phones, maybe 90 phones?) 120 days, 90 phones, 2 way communication, 12 hours = 35 messages per hour in that time.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday July 02 2019, @10:19PM
That is probably quite possible. They might not know (but can suspect) who the owner is, burner phone paid with cash etc, but they know the device is used to call or take call that are case/drug related. Also as mentioned it does cut down a bit if we assume they are having conversations via message, still it's a message every other minute around the clock for 120 straight days. That is a lot of messages.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 02 2019, @04:54PM
"I've had days where I've sent/received way more than 70 messages in one hour..."
Ah ha! Found the Gen Z in here.