>Still believe that monitoring will help? Dream your dreams - that monitoring will protect you...

Locked doors won't stop determined criminals, therefore they're a waste of money & time?

House fires can't be stopped so use your smoke detectors as hockey pucks and teach kids to play with matches?

Please give me a break.

> how many cases were solved because of monitoring - I am quite sure it is far below 1% of total number.

Not even close. Probably 10 to 20 times that number. Wiretaps are common if a suspect is identified but there is not yet enough evidence to arrest. Did you forget about this case? http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/03/02/peterson.ap/index.html

How about this one? http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/05/29/embassy.bombings.02/index.html

No, monitoring didn't prevent the embassy bombings, but do you doubt that they would have murdered more people if they weren't caught and convicted based on wiretap evidence?

>Also... There was a lot of information regarding Sep 11 attack, long ago before this happened, but it happened...

Uh yea, and where did that information come from? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

From what I've read much of it came from monitored phone conversations. And you wish to eliminate that?

Unfortunately not enough specific information was received to prevent the attacks. That doesn't mean we should stop gathering intelligence. See reference to smoke detectors above.

In any case, many of these posts are way off the track here. This legislation isn't about gathering foreign intelligence. That's already legal. This is about making sure that technological advances do not make it impossible for law enforcement to gather criminal intelligence which they already have legal and technical means to do today.

There need to be specific guidlines on when and how to use it (there are), there needs to be an oversight above law enforcement that has to authorize each and every instance (there is - court orders are required from a judge to 'turn on' the tap), and there needs to be consequences when the authority is misused.

This is how you prevent all of the paranoid fantasies being tossed about here from becoming reality. Oversight. Good, verifiable oversight, and frequent checks to make sure the system isn't being abused.

> There is another problem - abuse of monitoring. Some not really honest will use all those taps to spy on innocent (perhaps, on behalf of criminals), so...

You're right. This needs to be done very carefully, to prevent abuse and unauthorized use. But it needs to be done.

The alternative is to nearly eliminate law enforcement all together. If the police are not allowed to gather evidence, the only time crimes will be solved is when there is an eyewitness.

Open season. That isn't freedom, it's anarchy.

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