{"id":9638,"date":"2014-07-17T14:10:55","date_gmt":"2014-07-17T18:10:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=9638"},"modified":"2014-07-17T14:11:33","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T18:11:33","slug":"about-90-of-u-s-wiretaps-are-for-drug-deals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2014\/07\/about-90-of-u-s-wiretaps-are-for-drug-deals.html","title":{"rendered":"About 90% of U.S. wiretaps are for drug deals"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nYet another reason to end the failed War on Drugs:\r\nby far most U.S. wiretaps are for that one reason.\r\nSure, a wiretap helped catch a Mexican drug lord.\r\nBut without the War on Drugs, there would be no\r\ndrug lords, just like alcohol bootleggers vanished\r\nafter Prohibition ended.\r\n

\r\nBrian Anderson wrote for Motherboard 15 July 2014,\r\n\r\nAlmost 90 Percent of All US Wiretaps Listen for Suspected Drug Deals<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nEarlier this year, a joint US-Mexico wiretap investigation netted\r\nthe world’s top drug lord, Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, after American\r\nagents in Arizona intercepted a mobile phone owned by the son of one\r\nof Chapo’s closest confidantes. It was a huge catch—Chapo, the\r\nelusive head of the globe-spanning Sinaloa cartel, had been on the\r\nrun for 13 years.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\nBut that was merely one eavesdrop in the bucket of narcotics-based\r\nwiretaps carried out in the US in 2013, during which the bulk of the\r\nsurveillance that ultimately led to Chapo’s arrest actually went\r\ndown. According to a new Administrative Office of US Courts report,\r\nwiretaps not only hit an all-time high in 2013, the most recent year\r\nfor which we have data on law enforcement wiretaps. The overwhelming\r\nmajority, nearly 90 percent, listened for suspected narcotics\r\ndealings.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAnd that’s just FBI and DEA and the like,\r\nwithout even getting into FISA-court CIA-and NSA-style spying.\r\n

\r\nPropping up drug gangs and private prisons through drug prohibition\r\nisn’t worth throwing away the First Amendment.\r\nIt’s way past time to end the failed War on Drugs.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Yet another reason to end the failed War on Drugs: by far most U.S. wiretaps are for that one reason. Sure, a wiretap helped catch a Mexican drug lord. But without the War on Drugs, there would be no drug lords, just like alcohol bootleggers vanished after Prohibition ended. Brian Anderson wrote for Motherboard 15 […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[19,72,20,22,3],"tags":[1273,8701,8709,8730,8702,8710,12,7,8712,1878,79,8700,6,82],"class_list":["post-9638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history","category-incarceration","category-law","category-politics","category-transparency","tag-first-amendment","tag-georgia","tag-history","tag-incarceration","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-politics","tag-privacy","tag-prohibition","tag-transparency","tag-valdosta","tag-war-on-drugs"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-2vs","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9638"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9640,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9638\/revisions\/9640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}