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(credit: Francois Proulx)

The use of US court-sanctioned wiretaps is on the rise. According to the most recent figures available, the number of taps increased 17 percent last year over the previous year.

The latest federal Wiretap Report shows there were 4,148 non national security related wiretaps authorized in 2015. Not a single application was denied, the report notes. Of that total, 3,297 were granted an extension over the original time period authorized by the warrant.

Given all the access, just when should the cops hang up on the call they're bugging? A federal appeals court recently provided the answer—introducing the "plain hearing" principle.

(credit: CBS)

On this, the 50^th anniversary of Ars' favorite (well, ) TV show, we've decided to resurface this old Star Trek retrospective from a writer who only ever watched the show as an adult. Whether you're a die-hard junkie or merely watched the Tribbles episode once on late-night reruns, we hope you'll find something interesting about the franchise in these year-old words.

Here at Ars Technica, we have Star Trek on the brain. A lot. It's a thing most of us have strong opinions about, and without a physical office, sometimes the IRC watercooler chat devolves into half-hour-long discussions about the relative merits of such and such a character. That is, until a senior editor implores us to write up our thoughts instead of wasting time arguing idly over chat; we are writers, after all, and writing is what we ought to be doing during the work day.

I, too, have strong opinions about characters in Star Trek, but I came at the show from a much different perspective than most of my peers. My colleagues were astounded when I told them that I'd only seen one episode of Star Trek as a child (I don't even remember the plot) and my first real exposure had been as an adult, when I watched the entirety of The Original Series and The Next Generation in order, over the course of three years or so.

Enlarge / Deep Space Nine is on the wormhole front in the Dominion Wars, yet its main characters remain fundamentally humane and strive for peace. (credit: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

We all have people in our lives who are so important that their deaths would be tragic at an existential level. Recently, one such person in my life almost died. It wasn't one of those things where he narrowly escaped from sniper fire in a starship fight and we could raise a glass of synthahol in Ten Forward afterwards. He was plugged into life support machines for over a week, unconscious, with doctors shaking their heads and urging us to "be patient." Medical staff said completely terrifying things like "I think he'll probably make it."

I had plenty of time to imagine how my life would be utterly different without him. He's part of the family I've found with my circle of nerdy friends, and losing him would be like losing, well, part of my family. Part of me. Every night when I came home from the hospital, there was only one thing I could do that didn't make me want to cry. I watched Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.

I never really thought of ST:DS9 as a comforting show, or even a particularly brilliant one. I grew up on Star Trek: The Next Generation, so DS9 is definitely still "my" era in Star Trek, and I have hazy memories of enjoying it in college. Still, I never really loved DS9 the way I loved Data and Picard and TNG's ongoing wonky obsession with maintaining the Prime Directive on what Guinan called a "ship of peace." Yet in my darkest emotional hour, DS9 was what did it for me. I think that's because the show combined everyday stories of awfulness and political meltdown with an aggressive hopefulness about the future. Call it Utopia ex machina.

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