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Comment by declan | Hacker News Reader

On a per-capita basis, the Netherlands is at the top with far more electronic surveillance than almost any other country, and the U.S. is at the bottom. (This may be only domestic LE surveillance, can't remember.)

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The number of times the Dutch police have legally tapped telephone and internet lines may vastly exceed that of others such as the U.S. because the U.S. (thinks it) doesn't need a warrant and as such it's not being logged as a wiretap.

Some numbers of Dutch wiretaps: http://www.thehollandbureau.com/2010/03/07/the-netherlands-c...

Thanks for the citation. Excerpt from the article:

"That is 1681 per day. 84% of this tapping concerned mobile phones. Compare this with the news that there were 2208 taps in the United States in the whole of 2007."

It's comparing like to like. Neither numbers include intelligence-related surveillance, only domestic criminal law enforcement. The Dutch are wiretap-happy and the U.S., thanks to Title III, is relatively restrained.

The ability to intercept the communications of anyone on the internet without a warrant is relatively restrained?

Do you even have a source for your claims? How exactly are you comparing the two?

The U.S. courts publish non-intelligence wiretap stats per year: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=us+courts+annual+wiretap+statistics+201...

Intelligence gathering is rather different.

Why would you bother to wiretap, when you can listen to everyone, or get far more information through other means of data collection?

A) it's far more plausible to roll out pretty much any infrastructure in population-dense areas (i.e. netherlands, britain).

B) We really have no idea how much the US is wiretapping because apparently we don't need public warrants anymore because terrorists and freedom.

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