In a single warrant issued in 2016 as part of a drug investigation, unnamed US federal authorities tracked and recorded millions phone calls.
The wiretapping order authorized an unknown cybernetic service of America to conduct real-time recordings of 3,29 million mobile phone conversations during two months during 2016, after submitting an application at the end of 2015.
The warrant was signed to help the authorities attend 26 people suspected of drug trafficking in Pennsylvania.
The final amount spent on phone calls reached 335.000 dollars and led to twelve arrests.
However, none of the arrestees were convicted. The revelation was buried in the US court's annual report, published earlier this week.
"Federal wiretapping occurred during a narcotics investigation in the Middle District of Pennsylvania and resulted in the monitoring of 3.292.385 telephone conversations or messages to space 60 days", the report states.
The details of the case remain unknown.
But the above news makes it clear that telephone tapping continues to exist and is carried out with great ease in mass using only one warrant.
What we learned from Snowden leaks;
Ο Albert Gidari, πρώην δικηγόρος για την προστασία της ιδιωτικής ζωής, ο οποίος αυτή τη στιγμή υπηρετεί σαν διευθυντής στο Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, criticized the research.
"They spent a fortune watching 26 people, they recorded three million conversations and obviously nothing came out," Gidari said.
"I would love to see the possible affidavit for this and I wonder what the court thought."
"I am not surprised by the results because, on average, a very low percentage of conversations lead to guilt and a very small percentage lead to a conviction," he added.