ArsTechnica: Judge Estimates 30,000 Secret Surveillance Orders Approved Each Year
ArsTechnica: Judge Estimates 30,000 Secret Surveillance Orders Approved Each Year
I could understand maybe a few thousand electronic surveillance orders annually, but 30,000 to 50,000 or more such orders annually suggests possible abuse of the process and strikes me as a magnitude likely significantly beyond what lawmakers envisioned when the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) of 1986 was passed.
The revelation of the annual volume of electronic surveillance orders was made in a recent paper by U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen W. Smith: Gagged, Sealed & Delivered: Reforming ECPA’s Secret Docket, Harvard Law & Policy Review, Vol. 6, 2012 (forthcoming).