An anonymous reader writes:
New on the Bad Guys blog:
FBI Translating Over 1,000 Wiretap Conversations a Day
Spurred by adding hundreds of new linguists and help from allies overseas, the FBI is translating a record 34,000 wiretapped conversations a month, Bureau officials tell the Bad Guys blog. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/badguys/070220/f bi_translating_over_1000_wire.htm
Long criticized for their lack of language specialists, FBI officials say they are finally catching up to an unprecedented intake of surveillance since 9/11. In the last four years, the Bureau's counterterrorism investigations have netted a windfall of foreign language materials:
Over 500,000 hours of audio
5.5 million electronic data files
1.8 million pages of text
The growth in FBI electronic surveillance is due largely to counterterrorism and counterintelligence wiretaps. The number of national security wiretaps approved by the secret FISA court jumped by 122 percent from 2001 to 2005, the story notes, while criminal wiretaps have increased by only 19 percent.