Privacy: An Overview of Federal Statutes GoverningWiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping
Summary
This report provides an overview of federal law governing wiretapping andelectronic eavesdropping. It also surveys state law in the area and contains a bibliography of legal commentary.It is a federal crime to wiretap or to use a machine to capture thecommunications of others without court approval, unless one of the parties has giventheir prior consent. It is likewise a federal crime to use or disclose any informationacquired by illegal wiretapping or electronic eavesdropping. Violations can resultin imprisonment for not more than 5 years; fines up to $250,000 (up to $500,000 for organizations); in civil liability for damages, attorneys fees and possibly punitivedamages; in disciplinary action against any attorneys involved; and in suppressionof any derivative evidence. Congress has created separate but comparable protectiveschemes for electronic mail (e-mail) and against the surreptitious use of telephonecall monitoring practices such as pen registers and trap and trace devices.Each of these protective schemes comes with a procedural mechanism to affordlimited law enforcement access to private communications and communicationsrecords under conditions consistent with the dictates of the Fourth Amendment. Thegovernment has been given even more narrowly confined authority to engage inwiretapping and electronic eavesdropping in the name of foreign intelligencegathering in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
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