Telephone Eavesdropper Indicted; Homeland Security Department Needs Money; Senate Won’t Fund Poindexter Plan

Telephone Eavesdropper Indicted

In a case that underscores the dangers of eavesdropping on telephone calls, the former executive director of the Republican Party of Virginia has been indicted for listening in on a telephone call involving the Joint Democratic Caucus, according to a story in today’s New York Times. The Times reports that Edmund Matricardi III secretly recorded more than two hours of a telephone call, and is charged with unlawful interception of a wire communication.Homeland Security Department Needs MoneyWashington Post. The Post reports that security experts say the anti-terrorism effort will be billions of dollars short of what is required to protect the country from attacks.

The Department of Homeland Security, which officially opens today, has been given little money, despite the administration’s declarations about the importance of security issues, according to an article in today’s

Senate Won’t Fund Poindexter PlanDigitalMASS. The article reports that Senators worry about the program’s impact on civil liberties, and that they lack faith in Poindexter, who was convicted of deceiving Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Senate has voted to block funding for the Total Information Awareness program, which is run by John Poindexter and is intended to create an electronic dragnet that would scour databases for terrorist threats, according to an article in