The number of intercepts is lower than you would think, but why?

It comes as a surprise to most people that only 2600 Title III intercepts are done per year (as reported in 2005) in the United States. I’ll blame most of the surprise on all the police dramas on TV that, I think, lead most people to believe two things: 1 – it is very easy to get a warrant for an intercept and 2 – it happens all the time. But as the numbers attest, for a country with about 300 million citizens, 2600 is a very small number. Which country wins the prize for the most? Italy.

But I digress, lets take a quick look at the reasons that the number is so low. First of all you can thank the strong personal rights and freedoms that are enjoyed by US citizens. The court system is very reluctant to impede on those rights even for the sake of national security. In order for a Law Enforcement agency to receive approval (a warrant) to intercept someone’s communications they have to pass a very high bar and demonstrate significant need. This hurdle not only protects the intended target from undue invasion but also protects all of the potential people that target will be communicating with.

In addition to the significant legal barrier, law enforcement needs to be ready to allocate the necessary resources in terms of manpower. In the U.S. law enforcement can not “turn on the recorder” and record whatever happens and review it at some later point. In order to further protect the rights and privacy of U.S. citizens, when an intercept (wiretap) is being performed the call must be listened to live by a sworn law enforcement agent. This means 24 hours a day, seven days a week an agent needs to be ready to listen to the calls. In addition the agent has to be dedicated to that case, meaning they can’t listen to more than one call at a time. The reason they are dedicated is that if the content of the call is not relevant to the case, then the call is “minimized”. This means that portion of the call is not recorded and not made available for future review.

So at the highest level both the due process of the US judicial system and the required resources to operate an intercept prevent the number of intercepts from getting very large and restrict their use to the most significant cases.