Senate Subcommittee Considers Update to Wiretap Laws

A Senate subcommittee is looking at whether wiretap laws need to be updated to include secret video surveillance.

The field hearing in Philadelphia, which is being led by U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., comes amid a lawsuit accusing a Pennsylvania school district of spying on students through webcams installed on school-issued laptops.

An electronic privacy expert scheduled to testify, Kevin Bankston, from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is urging Congress to include videotaped surveillance under federal wiretap laws, giving the same protections that are given to secret audio recording.

The Pennsylvania lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in February, involves the Lower Merion school district, which is accused to activating built-in webcams to spy on students. The district claims that the feature in question can snap a picture of the operator and the screen if the computer is reported lost or stolen.

Read more here and be sure to check out and subscribe to our free weekly newsletter, The Round Up, for more news and upcoming events.

Looking For Lessons in Past Wiretapping Battle

In the good old days, there were copper lines and the feds liked to tap them. Then came digital switches and phones that could roam, and the feds wanted to tap them, too.

And in 1994, after acrimonious debate that ripped apart an emergent tech-focussed civil liberties group, the feds won and the phone system's architecture would have surveillance baked into the switches in perpetuity.

Lawmakers Let Surveillance Law Lapse

Members of the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives allowed a law that expanded the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities to lapse this weekend rather than pass a more permanent measure that would give immunity to the telecommunications companies that had previously cooperated with the Bush Administration's potentially illegal domestic wiretapping program.

Telephone Surveillance and Bugging - Is it Legal?

Investigation News - Telephone Surveillance and Bugging - Is it Legal? - PInow.com Investigator Directory: "Recording conversations or listening in to telephone conversations using wiretap is strictly controlled by laws. Understanding how these laws work protects everyone’s privacy and can help prevent needless lawsuits.

Telephone bugging, telephone surveillance, wiretapping: these are just a few names for what is essentially the same thing — listening into someone else’s conversation or recording it for later use. While there are many instances of people whose telephones are illegally tapped, placing a bug on a phone must be authorized by a search warrant or court order. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons to want to listen to someone’s telephone conversation, knowing what the laws are surrounding private conversations is important for anyone who wants to avoid messy lawsuit.

According to the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, 1,773 wiretap orders were issued by courts in 2005 alone. Obviously, it is much harder to get accurate statistics on illegal telephone surveillance, although it does occur."

What is telephone surveillance?

Electronic Surveillance — How is it affecting your Life?

Investigation News - Electronic Surveillance — How is it affecting your Life? - PInow.com Investigator Directory: "Electronic surveillance in its many forms is everywhere today, potentially creating greater safety for the public and for companies. Knowing how and where to use this type of surveillance can help individuals and companies make the right security decisions.

While plenty of people are aware of the fact that there are video cameras monitoring them inside of stores and banks, few people give much thought to the role that electronic surveillance plays in everyday life. However, there’s no doubt that e-surveillance has proliferated in recent years, with the federal government making moves to monitor more correspondence and personal information exchange in the private sector, and more companies seeking added steps to protect against fraud and theft.

In 2003, Enron executives certainly had their lives affected by electronic surveillance. In that year, the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission posted e-mail from Enron on its website. Outside surveillance does not always have to be that dramatic, either. Every day, without realizing it, someone may be reading someone else’s personal e-mail, listening into a conversation, or reading correspondence meant for someone else’s eyes only."

What is e-surveillance?