US govt used taxpayers’ money for snooping

AT&T,for example,imposes a $325 “activation fee” for each wiretap and $10 a day to maintain it. But snoop on a Verizon customer? That costs the government $775 for the first month and $500 each month after that,according to industry disclosures made last year to Congressman Edward Markey.

Meanwhile,email records like those amassed by the NSA probably were collected for free or very cheaply. Facebook says it doesn’t charge the government for access. And while Microsoft,Yahoo and Google won’t say how much they charge,the American Civil Liberties Union found that email records can be turned over for as little as $25.

Industry says it doesn’t profit from thousands of government eavesdropping requests it receives each year,and civil liberties groups want businesses to charge. They worry that government surveillance will become too cheap as companies automate their responses.

But privacy advocates also want companies to be upfront about what they charge and alert customers after an investigation has concluded that their communications were monitored. “What we don’t want is surveillance to become a profit centre,” said Christopher Soghoian,the ACLU’s principal technologist.