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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: 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.