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Wiretap stats from 1999:
http://www.uscourts.gov/wiretap99/contents.html
Clinton statement:
http://www.politechbot.com/docs/clinton-crypto.050300.html
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http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,36067,00.html
U.S. to Track Crypto Trails
by Declan McCullagh ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
3:00 a.m. May. 4, 2000 PDT
WASHINGTON -- President Clinton has authorized the federal government
to begin keeping track of how often suspected criminals use encryption
to thwart police wiretaps.
Clinton has signed a bill that requires the Justice Department to
report how frequently it encounters encrypted conversations. Over
2,450,000 telephone conversations were legally intercepted in 1999,
according to government statistics released this week.
The president signed the measure Tuesday and said it would require
only summary statistics. "The reporting requirement ... does not
require specific case-by-case or order-by-order reporting, which could
jeopardize law enforcement sources and methods and provide clear
direction to criminals seeking to use encryption to hide their
unlawful conduct," he said in a statement.
Depending on how widespread encryption has become, the results of the
annual survey could help the arguments of privacy advocates, who say
police fears are exaggerated, or boost the claims of law enforcement
officials, who have pressed for limits on data-scrambling products.
[...]
