US police increasingly peeping at e-mail, instant messages
Found on TechWorld on Tuesday, 12 April 2011
"Unfortunately, there are no reporting requirements for the modern surveillance methods that make up the majority of law enforcement requests to service providers and telephone companies," Soghoian wrote.
Citing a New York Times story from 2006, Soghoian wrote that AOL was receiving 1,000 requests per month.
In 2009, Facebook told the news magazine Newsweek that it received 10 to 20 requests from police per day. Sprint received so many requests from law enforcement for mobile-phone location information that it overwhelmed its 110-person electronic surveillance team.
The more surveillance you enable, and the easier you make it, the more it will be abused. That should be pretty obvious. That's how a police state starts.