wiretaps from Privacy digest

[David Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

Date:    Sun, 9 Jan 1994 17:41:52 -0500 (EST)
From:    John Higgins <higgins@dorsai.dorsai.org>
Subject: wiretaps


Are the cops tapping your phone? If you live in Oklahoma, Rhode Island or
Virginia, probably not. But if you're really paranoid don't move to New York
City, New Jersey or Florida.


On Jan. 9. New York Newsday published an article on wiretaps listing them by
location. Citing a report compiled by the Administrative Office of the United
States Courts, the article said that New York State cops lead the country with
197 wiretaps installed in 1992. The aforementioned low-tap states reported
intalling just 1 phone or room bug, but of the 39 states that have wiretap
statutes 17 reported no taps AT ALL (no, I don't know which states those are).


Of the federal jurisdictions not on the list, 44 reported fewer than 10 taps
for the year, including 19 who reported one tap and 36 who reported zero.


I know that cops hate wiretaps, especially room bugs because they're so labor
intensive, but this doesn't seem like a whole lot of wiretaps in some of these
areas. Only seven local taps in Massachusetts? Three state wiretaps in all of
California? If these are accurate reports, this is far less pervasive than I
would have expected.


STATE AND LOCAL WIRETAP ACTIVITY (1992)
New York                 197 Nebraska                 4
New Jersey               111 Nevada                   4
Florida                  80  Utah                     3
Pennsylvania             77  Minnesota                3
Maryland                 17  California               3
Georgia                  16  Colorado                 2
Connecticut              15  New Hampshire            2
Texas                    14  New Mexico               2
Arizona                  12  Virginia                 1
Kansas                   7   Rhode Island             1
Massachusetts            7   Oklahoma                 1


FEDERAL WIRETAP ACTIVITY (1992)
Eastern Dist of NY       35  Central Dist of Calif.   14
Southern Dist. of NY     25  Arizona                  12
Southern Dist of Fla.    20  Western Dist. of NY      12
New Jersey               18  Easter Dist. of Penn.    12
Northern DIst of Tex.    16  Middle Dist of Florida   11
Colorado                 15  Eastern Dist. of Mich.   10
Maryland                 15  Southern Dist. of Tex    10


I'm going to try and obtain the full report this week.


John M. Higgins                   higgins@dorsai.dorsai.org
Multichannel News                 CIS:75266,3353
                                  V)212-887-8390/F)212-887-8384


------------------------------