Don't Use The Phone

CBS News informed us last night that the government can listen in to and record your telephone calls without a warrant, provided that the phone tap is not targeting you, but is catching your conversation incidental to some other phone that it is targeting. I’m not sure that their interpretation of the spying law is correct, although the government may be making it correct on a de facto basis.

What CBS News is saying is that what the intelligence agencies were doing was spying on Russians, which they are legally entitled to do, so anyone talking to the Russians can also be recorded and their conversations used as evidence against them. It’s called “incidental collection,” we are told, and it “happens every day.” Sort of invokes the phrase “collateral damage,” and what it means is that intelligence agencies can record almost everything.

You may not have to worry about a tap on your own telephone, because the law says that you must be informed if your own phone is tapped. (Actually, it doesn’t, because the FISA law allows them to tap your phone without informing you.) You never know, however, when the person you are talking to may be being tapped, which would result in you being recorded and your words being used against you.

Best advice; never talk to anyone on the telephone about anything that you do not want the entire world to know. Someone is almost certainly listening.