17 Dec
2003
17 Dec
'03
11:17 p.m.
Lucky Green writes:
One more time. Despite what you read in the papers, despite what most people - even in the legal profession - believe, telephone wiretaps do _not_ require a court order. They haven't required a court order in over a year.
They never required a conventional court order. This was not new. They always had a national security escape clause. However, at least they cannot be used in court unless there was a court order involved, and the process of getting "legitimate" authorization to, say, bug the embassy phones, does require that certain forms be followed. The real problem, IMHO, is that people can avoid the formalities entirely and simply unlawfully wiretap, and that tracing such attempts is hard. Perry