"What is the estimated number of people who have been significantly wronged by abusive wiretapping, and how does it compare to the number of criminals arrested

"What is the estimated number of people who have been significantly wronged by abusive wiretapping, and how does it compare to the number of criminals arrested and crimes averted by wiretapping?" When selling or even possessing recreational drugs is a crime, and when search and arrest warrants are routinely served by paramilitary teams, talk of "the number of criminals arrested" is meaningless. America's legal system has become so broad that anyone can be arrested, and the obvious result of that has been that America has the largest prison population of any country in the world by an order of magnitude. Law enforcement is not about catching all criminals, nor is it about preventing all crimes. The power we give to law enforcement must be balanced with the need to preserve a free society. The more power the police are given, the easier it is to enforce oppressive laws, and by extension to create oppressive laws in the first place. We limit the use of police power with complicated procedures and requirements for that very reason. It is also the case that expanded law enforcement powers tend to disproportionately impact certain minorities due to the disproportionate attention given to those communities by the police. As things are now, there are black communities in America where a quarter of the men are in prison or have been imprisoned. It is a near-certainty that if the FBI's proposal becomes law, the new wiretapping power will be disproportionately applied to already-oppressed minorities. "I understand that the situation is different in authoritarian countries." The sad truth is that right now, nobody can truly know that they have never committed a felony. As an example, large numbers of Virginians naively believed that living with their boyfriend/girlfriend was perfectly legal; yet until a few weeks ago, it was a crime: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/virginia-weird-laws-sodomy-cohabitation_n_2609265.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/03/virginia-weird-laws... It is by the selective application of these surprise laws that the US government is able to achieve an effect similar to that of a authoritarian government. Obscure laws have been used to attack protesters in the past: http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/prosecutors-can-charge-greenpeace-under-obscure-law http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/prosecutors-can-charge-g... http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576581171443151568.html?mod=e2tw http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190419460457658... Expanded police power means an expanded ability to engage in these sorts of tactics. It is not a stretch to say that if the police can more easily wiretap people, they can more easily identify protesters planning to wear masks or board ships. Perhaps some other obscure law will be invoked next time -- there are so many laws that the Federal government is not even able to count them all.