Yep, it’s true. Even the G-men who are trying to track down criminals get calls from those pesky telemarketers.
Buried in a 160-page report by the U.S. Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine was a little nugget that the Federal Bureau of Investigation apparently has been receiving calls from telemarketers on telephone lines set up for wiretaps.
When the FBI gets a court order to tap a phone line, they set up telephone lines that deliver those calls to the authorities. However, it turns out that those phone lines are assigned actual numbers by the phone company.
“It is not uncommon for these lines to ‘receive’ calls from telemarketers and others who use auto-dialers and other automated call technology to place calls,” FBI Deputy Director John Pistole said in a letter to the inspector general.
The issue came up when the inspector general expressed concern that an FBI field office had gone beyond the period in which a court ordered wiretap was authorized, known as an ‘overrun’, or had possibly collected material after a judge had ordered the FBI to stop.
As a public service, here’s the link to the Federal Trade Commission’s Do-Not-Call registry in case the FBI wants to avoid getting those calls in the middle of dinner — or a stakeout.
Click here for more Reuters political coverage.
- Photo credit: Reuters/Finbarr O’Reilly (A call center in Senegal)
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4 comments so far
If anyone was ever in a position to hunt down those telemarketers and final-fix them it’s the FBI. Don’t waste this opportunity to help Americans everywhere. Use those resources for the overall good,….then murder them.
- Posted by RealNeilI HATE telemarketers. They ruined my life. Called me up to ten times a day at the worst times for a month. Send them to jail!
- Posted by Nthey need to put a stop to ALL telemarketers even the ones that they say are exempt.exempt or not they still call all the time..want to renew my insurance on my credit cards.i dont have or use credit cards,then they hang up on me.cant get their phone #.when i call the # on my caller id ,recording says this # can not recieve incoming calls.
- Posted by janeyi pay my phone bill so i feel they should not be able to call me.my best thing to do is talk to them for at least 20 minutes lelling them i life story and they are glad to hang up.usually this stops that one company.
but i dont have the time or energy to do them all.
it’s usually a computer anyway.
Hey people!
- Posted by PwlMI hate getting those calls too but to want to murder them???? come on. They probably hate their jobs even more than we hate their calls.