The man who says as long as he tends the people's business his business is nobody's business seems to love minding your own business. President Clinton's new $1.84 trillion budget may be dead on arrival, as Republicans on Capitol Hill say, but it includes millions for wiretapping, over $1 billion for porn and firearms investigations, and millions more for other surveillance-related activities.
President Clinton's $1.84 trillion budget includes a whopping $240 million for telephone companies to rewire for federal and state wiretapping. As it happens, the 1994 Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act lets Congress reimburse telephone companies for their efforts, but that process is the subject of a lawsuit now in front of a federal appeals court.
And guess where half the money is coming for the bugs? From the Defense Department's "national security" budget - which alarms no few privacy groups.
"The proposal to use thinly disguised intelligence agency money to fund CALEA confirms what we have suspected all along: The National Security Agency is a silent partner in the government's campaign to make our entire telecommunications system, including the Net, wiretap ready," says Barry Steinhardt, associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union, to Wired. "If it's up to the FBI and the NSA, the only medium of communications they won't be able to tap will be two tin cans and a string."
The Defense Department's budget shows Clinton asking for a $51 million increase over last year's military intelligence and communications activities, the magazine says.
The Justice Department would also make out like bandits if the President had his way. He earmarked $3.28 billion, including over $1 billion for porn investigations as well as computer crime probes and intellectual property theft. Here's the rundown, according to Wired:
Clinton wants a $100 million increase in paying for 94 U.S. Attorneys and their close to 10,000 aides, this extra cash ($1.42 billion) said to be necessary for pornography and firearm investigations and "to increase prosecutions of computer crime or those involved with the theft of intellectual property," Wired says.
The President has also called for $11.4 million for "hir(ing) data forensics examiners to retrieve and enhance examinations of computer evidence," the magazine continues; $100 million for "automated data processing and telecommunications and technical investigative equipment (up from $50 million); and, $300 million for "counter-terrorism."
Clinton also wants to spend $5 million to blend the Immigration and Naturalization Service's IDENT fingerprint system with the FBI's immigration database; and, $4.3 million to put in a Public Key Infrastructure for the Justice Department's computer network. And, there's also $1.8 million included to finish a "Joint Automated Booking System" to let the FBI monitor arrests and keep a "current, nationwide reference for criminal offenders, arrests, cases, and related data" - including images and fingerprints.
