Electronic Privacy

In 1968, Congress passed legislation banning wiretapping without a warrant. The law, which was long overdue, specifically referred to voice communication, which was essentially the only telephone communication at the time. Since then, however, computer technology has ushered in electronic communication, which is now in heavy use by businesses and individuals. Unfortunately, such electronic communication--in the form of electronic mail, data networks and cellular telephones--may be tapped with impunity.

To remedy this situation, Congress has before it the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which was passed by the House last summer and is now awaiting action in the Senate. The need for this legislation is great. A year ago, the Office of Technology Assessment reported that one-fourth of the 142 federal agencies it surveyed said they either had already intercepted or planned to intercept electronic communications.

Chief among the eavesdroppers were the FBI, the Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Internal Revenue Service and the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. In order to prevent the report from being classified, the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency were not included in the survey, but it is safe to assume that they are the nosiest agencies.

Nor did the report attempt to assess the extent of private eavesdropping by competing companies or by individual snoops. There is currently no law against it, and anyone who communicates by computer should be aware that it is legal for anyone else to listen in.

The intent of Congress in 1968 was clear. It wanted to make sure that citizens had all the privacy in communicating by wire that they already had in communicating by mail. The legislators wrote the law with the phone in mind, but they didn’t know that there was about to be an expansion in the technology of communication over phone lines. They should bring the law up to date as swiftly as possible.