Agencies and Telephone Lines Essay - 275 Words

Should Law Enforcement Agencies be Permitted to Tap Telephone Lines? (Essay Sample) Content: Should law enforcement agencies be permitted to tap telephone lines?Telephone tapping refers to the type of electronic eavesdropping that is made possible by seizing or overhearing interlocutions by way of an obscured recording or listening object that is connected to the communication line. It is a form of Electronic surveillance whose aim is to monitor telephonic and telegraphic communications. The Federal Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C.A. 151) prohibits private citizens from intercepting any kind of communication and going ahead to divulge its contents.The introduction and subsequent implementation of this electronic surveillance raised fundamental concerns regarding the privacy of individual citizens. If one could tap and divulge contents of a communication, then privacy would be seriously compromised. This view remained strong until 1982 when the U.S. Supreme Court, in the case of olmstead v. united states, 277 U.S. 438, 48 S. Ct. 564, 72 L. Ed. 944, held t hat the act of tapping a telephone line did not in any way violate the Fourth Amendment's prohibition that is against unlawful searches and seizures, as long as the police did not trespass on the property of the person being tapped.Telephone tapping remains a vital component of security checks in this error where terrorism reigns supreme and the security of citizens is guaranteed no more. With this in mind, the security agents should be allowed to tap telephone lines with the sole purpose of protecting the citizens under whose mandate it falls. Although this is inundated with challenges like the question of bringing to account rogue security agents, the life of citizens is a basic right that should be protected at all costs.Following the September 2011 Terrorist attacks that rocked the US and shocked the world, the Congress widened the telephone (wire) tapping rules for monitoring the terror suspects and perpetrators of computer fraud through the USA Patriot Act, 2001. This simply s hows how far governments are ready to go in their pursuit of establishing safe ...