The police forces in my area have taken a page out of the NSA's book.

http://hamptonroads.com/2014/10/repo...ing-phone-data

Worked in telecom for years, electronic surveillance has pretty much always been part of the phone network. Manufacturers are required to provide capabilities for lines to be traced and tapped.

Granted this extends that concept a lot; and isn't some of that our fault for helping develop great new collaborative programming or cluster computing technologies?

Why is this surprising? I've heard that VA Staties are the worst for people like me who aren't registered in that state.

The only thing I found surprising in the story was that the state police opted out, finding the program too intrusive and possibly against state law.

Maybe they figured it out to be a boondoggle, strictly for the benefit of a few well-connected gadget peddlers. Perhaps the problem was partly that they're supposed to contribute some of their own money to pay for it, even if it's "forfeiture money."

It is already possible to get a court-ordered wiretap very easily. But it's not often done, because now you have to commit staff time to listening, transcribing, and so on. (The "Siri"-like technologies that promise to "let a computer do it" have not been very successful.) An obviously very-expensive machine to tap every phone is, of course, "illegal as hell," but it is also just a waste of time and money from a law-enforcement point of view.

Right now, as I said in another thread, we are infatuated with the notion of eavesdropping on everything, and there are plenty of hawkers who are bilking Uncle Sugar to the tune of billions of dollars. The people who (literally ...) have their boots on the ground just might see things differently.

Interestingly, now that there is an iota of real public push-back to the notion of turning policemen into stormtroopers, quite a few members of the police forces are stepping up to push-back on the idea, also. Apparently it was initially forced upon them by Homeland Security and the military contractors, who not only paid for it all (at our expense), but also compelled them to accept it. Whereas the officers who actually have to police the city have a very different set of priorities in mind.

War, we must never overlook, is insanely profitable.

except for those who must fight it.

... which the industrialists care nothing about. Their children are quite safe.

There's billions of dollars a day to be made from war ... and, now, from "homeland security" (sic). A nation that won't provide health care for its own citizens, won't maintain its own roadways and bridges, won't support college education for a new generation, and so on and on and on, will pay for "War Without End, Amen" ... abroad, and now, at home.

This, of course, is nothing new. Rome, in its declining years, built "Roman Roads to Nowhere" to support its own version of military contractors. We have very-old manuscripts, carved on clay tablets, which bemoan the lawyers. And so on. Human nature is very ... human.