The Electronic Encyclopedia (TM)
     (C) 1988 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.

          wiretapping
     
          Wiretapping, also called bugging, traditionally refers to the secret
     tapping of a telephone or telegraph line in order to eavesdrop on another
     person. The term now has been expanded, however, to include all forms of
     electronic surveillance. Recent developments in electronics have supplied
     many new techniques of eavesdropping. Radio transmitters with integrated
     microcircuits have been made small enough to permit their insertion into
     bits of cardboard or behind wallpaper. Most recently, the laser technique
     of focusing light beams on the tapped party has permitted monitoring
     ordinary voices from miles away.
     
          Wiretapping is used in international espionage; wiretapping for
     industrial secrets can produce large advantages and profits. Wiretapping
     is also used in personal lawsuits (especially in divorce actions); to gain
     market information; and especially by law enforcement officers, who find
     it a most valuable way of accumulating evidence or anticipating criminal
     activity. Innocent people, however, can be victimized, harmed, and
     embarrassed by wiretapping. In the United States the practice has been
     attacked as an invasion of privacy (see PRIVACY, INVASION OF). Wiretapping
     has been regarded as a kind of unreasonable search (unconstitutional under
     the 4TH AMENDMENT) and as a method that, in effect, compels one to testify
     against oneself (which is also constitutionally prohibited under the 5TH
     AMENDMENT).
     
          Wiretapping, therefore, has been generally declared to be criminal
     activity. Still, it is widely practiced, and only a small percentage of
     bugs are exposed. When they are exposed, justice does not ordinarily
     punish the culpable. In the 7 1/2-year period ending June 30, 1974,
     approximately 1,460 violations of federal wiretap laws were uncovered by
     telephone company employees and reported to the FBI, but only 2 percent of
     those cases resulted in arrest.
     
               U.S. Legal History.
     
          In its first ruling on a wiretap case the U.S. Supreme Court held in
     Olmstead v. United States (1928) that police wiretapping was not a
     violation of the 4th Amendment's ban on unreasonable search and seizure.
     In his famous dissent, however, Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes,
     Jr., called the practice a "dirty business" and said that the government
     had no business resorting to it. In the Communications Act of 1934 the
     Congress outlawed wiretapping, which made evidence garnered by bugging
     inadmissible in court. Subsequently, several states passed laws that
     permitted law-enforcement officials to gather evidence against potential
     criminals by wiretapping. In 1967, however, the Supreme Court ruled, in
     Katz v. United States, that wiretapping does violate 4th Amendment rights,
     in effect reversing the Olmstead ruling. The Crime Control Act of 1968
     provides a carefully drawn system for judicially approved wiretapping.
     Since then the Court has ruled that court orders must be obtained even in
     cases involving national security.
     
          Alfred De Grazia
     
     Bibliography:
          Carr, James G., The Law of Electronic Surveillance (1977);
     Cederbaums, Juris, Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping (1969);
     LeMond, Alan, and Fry, Ron, No Place to Hide (1975); Long, E. V., The
     Intruders: The Invasion of Privacy by Government and Industry (1969);
     The Electronic Encyclopedia (TM)
     (C) 1988 Grolier Electronic Publishing, Inc.

     Pollock, David A., Methods of Electronic Audio Surveillance (1979).
     

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