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]