United States , U. The act required telephone companies to make it easier for law enforcement to wiretap telephone calls. Today wiretapping is done electronically by telephone companies that receive a warrant. The digital version of a pen register is a substantial improvement.
EPIC advocates for both courts and Congress to restrict the use of wiretaps and preserve privacy over the phone. EPIC opposes any measure to make wiretaps easier that compromises the security and privacy of communications.
EPIC attorneys regularly investigate the use of wiretaps by intelligence agencies. Now negotiations over the bill will likely happen over weeks and months, behind closed doors, with the House horse-trading oversight provisions with the Senate in exchange for a compromise on total amnesty for the nation's telecoms.
If you've been having trouble tracking what the various surveillance bills are all about, don't blame yourself -- there's been plenty of misinformation going around. Here's Wired. Why is Congress expanding the government's spying authority? The administration says its warrantless eavesdropping only listened in on international phone calls and e-mails. After The New York Times revealed a portion of the program in December , Bush eventually allowed a secret spying court to review it. After the secret court secretly declared the program illegal, Congress legalized portions of it temporarily in the summer of Called the Protect America Act, the law allowed the National Security Agency to continue to wiretap inside the United States, but did not allow it to target Americans inside the country without a warrant.
Residents could still be spied on in bulk, say, by collecting every e-mail sent to or from someone outside the country, but the NSA couldn't focus on an American inside the United States without a warrant. That law expired in February after House Republicans voted down an extension, hoping to force Democrats to pass a permanent law without debate in the House. How is Congress expanding the government's spying authority? The NSA says it needs to position wiretapping facilities inside the United States because, these days, much international-to-international communication passes through telecom hubs located on U.
While the agency could tap these communications overseas, it would be a real pain. In Olmstead the Court showed deference to the state and its efforts to gather evidence of a crime, whereas Katz illustrates a clear move towards greater protection of individual liberties.
In October , President George W. It was not until December that the existence of the program was exposed by the New York Times. An article in the newspaper stated that the program was targeting U. The random collection of information from land-line calls, cell phones, and e-mail creates uneasiness about the limits of government surveillance of citizens.
The Supreme Court has previously held that listening to conversations of U. The ACLU argued that the wiretapping violated its and its clients' right to free speech in their communication with people outside of the United States. The injunction was intended to end the warrantless wiretapping by the NSA, which justified the action as essential in fighting the War on Terror.
The FISA court was intended to place a wall between intelligence information gathering and criminal investigations. In Clapper v. The federal district court had dismissed the case for lack of standing, but the Second U. Circuit Court of Appeals had reversed this ruling.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the decision for five members of the Court, rejecting their arguments to establish standing. Wiretapping has come to encompass more than just the monitoring of voice data. Internet packets can also be tracked through what are called "packet sniffers. How packet sniffing works. Wiretapping has a rich history of usage in criminal investigations and matters of national security. Past wiretapping has generally revolved around telephone conversations, as the government was slow to adapt to the Internet age.
When the government swung its focus to Internet communications, the FBI developed the Carnivore packet sniffer. In , the FBI employed an outside contractor to develop Carnivore, a customizable packet sniffer which could filter packets to pick up only what the specific surveillance target was communicating.
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