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Tags: Ameer Makhoul, avigdor-lieberman, civil rights, eavesdropping, national-security, shin-bet
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The wiretapping statistics refer only to police investigations, as far as I can see. “Security” investigations that require wiretaps either have a different procedure or can just go ahead and tap without judicial review.
This is indeed interesting. Do you have similar statistics about other countries? I’d like to see how Israel compares to the rest of the world.
In Finland the police listened to 2,124 telephone subscriptions in 2009 and to 1,714 in 2008. One person can have several telephone subscriptions so the amount of followed persons is lower. In Finland the suspects under wiretaping are mostly normal drug smuggling and selling gangsters, domestic and foreign.
The figure in Finland is higher than in Israel a couple of years ago so it is highly likely that the Israeli figure only includes listening permits of Jews and for listening to Arabs’ (citizens and occupied slaves) phones and other telecommunication no court permit is needed. Israeli establishment has so good knowledge of what happens in the Palestinian circles that a couple of hundred legal wiretaping permits do not produce such “knowledge”. The real amount of wiretab “permits” in Israel must be tens of thousands, for the Arabs and domestic Jewish opposition + normal criminal “activity” (which in Israel is rather lively).