Wiretap Report 2017

The Wiretap Report for 2017 is available on the US Courts web-site. Of interest in this year's report is that: The number of federal and state wiretaps reported in 2017 increased 20 percent from 2016. A total of 3,813 wiretaps were reported as authorized in 2017, with 2,013 authorized by federal judges and 1,800 authorized by state judges. Compared to the applications approved during 2016, the number approved by federal judges increased 30 percent in 2017, and the number approved by state judges increased 11 percent. No wiretap applications were reported as denied in 2017.

Applications concentrated in six states (California, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, New Jersey, and Florida) accounted for 81 percent of all state wiretap applications. Applications in California alone constituted 34 percent of all applications approved by state judges.

The most common method of surveillance reported was wire surveillance that used a telephone (land line, cellular, cordless, or mobile). Telephone wiretaps accounted for 92 percent (2,218 cases) of the intercepts installed in 2017, the majority of them involving cellular telephones.

Encryption

The number of state wiretaps reported in which encryption was encountered increased from 57 in 2016 to 102 in 2017.  In 97 of these wiretaps, officials were unable to decipher the plain text of the messages. A total of 57 federal wiretaps were reported as being encrypted in 2017, of which 37 could not be decrypted. Encryption was also reported for 32 federal and 9 state wiretaps that were conducted during a previous year, but reported to the AO for the first time in 2017. Officials were not able to decipher the plain text of the communications in 8 of the state intercepts or 29 of the federal of intercepts.
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Of the 3813 wiretaps authorized in 2017, encryption was encountered in only 4% of the cases. In those cases where encryption was used, it was effective in protecting the content of the communication 95% of the time in state cases and 65% of the time in Federal cases. Properly implemented encryption works, but in the vast majority of cases (96%) it is not being used by the subjects of wiretap orders. (This is probably a good thing since most wiretaps target drug dealers.)

I previously discussed Wiretap Reports in early December 2017.