What is “minimization”?
The laws state that the FBI must be very careful to minimize how much it inadvertently eavesdrops on. Agents must be very careful to monitor only the information authorized by the court order, and nothing more. For example, if they are wiretapping the telephone of the father of a family, then if a kid dials-out, they must immediately turn off the recording machines. For telephones, this requires an FBI agent who constantly listens on the line monitoring for such things. This means that the FBI is not allowed to listen for any emails containing the word “plutonium”, because it would inadvertently capture messages from innocent people. Instead, they must prove to a judge that they can tap into only the traffic for the specific suspect; i.e. they must give the judge the exact e-mail address they are going to monitor. FBI agents are very paranoid about this. If extra stuff leaks into their recordings, they must carefully discard it. Also, if a lot of stuff has leaked in, then the defense a
The laws state that the FBI must be very careful to minimize how much it inadvertently eavesdrops on. Agents must be very careful to monitor only the information authorized by the court order, and nothing more. For example, if they are wiretapping the telephone of the father of a family, then if a kid dials-out, they must immediately turn off the recording machines. For telephones, this requires an FBI agent who constantly listens on the line monitoring for such things. This means that the FBI is not allowed to listen for any emails containing the word plutonium, because it would inadvertently capture messages from innocent people. Instead, they must prove to a judge that they can tap into only the traffic for the specific suspect; i.e. they must give the judge the exact e-mail address they are going to monitor. FBI agents are very paranoid about this. If extra stuff leaks into their recordings, they must carefully discard it. Also, if a lot of stuff has leaked in, then the defense att
