By Mark Morris, Kansas City Star, July 4, 2013

[....] Today’s law enforcement wiretap is far more likely to be on a “portable device,” most likely a cellphone, according to a new report by federal court administrators.

And for the first time, the report noted, U.S. law enforcement has encountered encryption schemes that prevented investigators from understanding the messages they’d intercepted.

The new study, an annual snapshot of court-ordered wiretaps produced by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, focused exclusively on law enforcement electronic surveillance and not on national security wiretaps approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which have become controversial in recent weeks. [....]

Nationwide, the report reflects a surging enthusiasm for wiretaps among investigators and prosecutors. Applications for wiretaps to state and federal judges more than doubled between 2002 and 2012, from 1,359 to 3,397.

Narcotics investigations accounted for 87 percent of wiretap investigations. [....]

John Osgood, a local criminal defense lawyer who served as a federal prosecutor in the 1980s, said the proliferation of wiretaps is one element contributing to a trend in both Kansas and Missouri of large, multi-defendant drug cases. [....]