Re: Watch your language, Shabbir.

[jim bell <jimbell@pacifier.com>]

At 07:58 AM 4/14/96 -0500, Mike McNally wrote:
>s1113645@tesla.cc.uottawa.ca wrote:
>> > Look, very carefully, at the last paragraph quoted above.  Mr. Safdar
>> > says, "No reasonable person is objecting to the FBI's right to conduct
>> > a wiretap."
>> 
>> That's right. Because no reasonable person thinks they can convince Congress
>> or the Supremes otherwise. It isn't impossible, but energies are best spent
>> elsewhere, like getting the Burns bill passed.
>
>The choice of words was exceedlingly poor if that's what he really meant.
>Though I agree that it's unlikely any LEA will give up capabilities it's
>grown to imagine is has a "right" to have, I haven't stopped objecting.
>

Exactly!  I think the issue is important enough so that we really ought to 
develop new wording, something that far more accurately reflects the bulk of our
opinion towards wiretapping.

For years, I've looked at it this way:  Before the telephone era, "all" 
search warrants were probably issued for a specific address, and had to be 
served for a limited time period, a few hours or less.  The owners of the 
location being searched were aware, at the time the search was going on, 
that the search was occuring.  Moreover, once that search ended it was no 
more and those searched were aware of it.

Unlike this, and quite unlike any warrants which preceded it, wiretaps:

1.  Take an almost unlimited time period, compared to a 1-hour search.  
(Yes, they do come to an end, but...)

2.  The users of the telephone line are not informed, while the search 
(wiretap) is being done.

3.  To my knowledge, albeit limited, targets of wiretaps are NOT informed, 
subsequent to the tap, that they have been wiretapped.  Therefore they are 
denied the opportunity to complain, even after the fact.


I see no legal reason why wiretaps should have the "features" listed above.  
There is a certain practical reason they can:  Due to the nature of 
wiretapping, it is not physically necessary to show up to do the tap, or 
tell those targeted, or tell them after the tap has been disconnected.  
However, it seems very unlikely that the mere fact that an invention allows 
a kind of search that was possible before, should automatically change the 
interpretation of the Constitution to allow that search.

If a new invention allowed the cops to walk through walls untraceably, would 
that automatically mean that the normal protections that search warrants are 
supposed to provide are no longer valid?  I don't think so!

Jim Bell
jimbell@pacifier.com