[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]
Re: CWD--Wiretap In the Night
Adding to the CWD wiretap alarm by Brock and Declan:
The Washington Post, September 26, 1996, p. A30.
Wiretaps and Money Bills [Editorial]
Legislators who have pet projects but not enough support to
get them passed have a way of turning desperate during the
closing days of the congressional session. Their thoughts
turn ineluctably to unrelated appropriations bills. Only
last week, Rep. Frank Wolf used the transportation funding
bill as a vehicle for usurping the courts' role in a
specific domestic relations dispute. Now senators working
on the Commerce, State and Justice appropriations bill have
slipped in provisions relating to wiretaps that have been
before the Congress for 18 months but have not been
adopted. The law should not be changed by means of these
stealthy riders.
One of the substantive changes in the criminal laws ordered
by the money committee, for example, would make it easier
to obtain court orders authorizing "roving" wiretaps. This
would permit putting taps on any phone a suspect might use
-- including unspecified public phones -- without
requiring, as the law now does, that the government show
that the suspect is attempting to thwart a home or office
tap by repeatedly changing phones. This may or may not be
reasonable, but Congress considered and rejected it earlier
this year. It shouldn't be shoved through on an
appropriations bill.
The committee bill also increased the number of crimes for
which a wiretap can be issued, adding a list of new,
relatively imprecise offenses related to terrorism such as
"providing material support to terrorists" and "terrorist
acts transcending national borders." Taps already are
allowed for just about every major crime in which a
terrorist might engage, including bombing, arson, murder,
kidnapping, extortion, espionage, sabotage, treason,
hostage-taking and the destruction of trains ships,
aircraft and aircraft facilities. What, then, is the reason
for adding these new elastic terms, which could include far
less serious offenses that someone thinks might be linked
to terrorism? The committees that dealt with the subject in
April did not see fit to do so. Why now has the
Appropriations Committee intervened?
The competing values of security and privacy rights require
a much better sorting out. It's best done by people who
have had the benefit of relevant testimony and experience.
The appropriations committees are the wrong setting to deal
with such questions, which should not be presented in a
take-it-or-leave-it package with the government's continued
operation at stake.
[End]