Warrantless Wiretapping Challenged

WARRANTLESS WIRETAPPING CHALLENGED

Wisconsin Senator Gaylord Nelson and North Carolina Senator Sam Ervine have introduced a bill that would require the Justice Department and the FBI to obtain a court order ahead of time before wiretapping any phone. 

According to the two Senators, bot agencies continue to engage in warrantless wiretaps for so-called "national security" purposes. 

Nelson says that a Senate study has disclosed that many law-abiding citizens - including the late Doctor Martin Luther King Junior and newspaper columnist Joseph Kraft - were wiretapped repeatedly by government police agencies without court permission. 

The two Senators said that under their bill, wiretaps could be carried out by government agencies - but only after the agencies received writted authorization in the form of a warrant "from a neutral court." 

Nelson and Ervin recently headed a coalition of Senators which successfully repealed the controversial "no-knock" provision which had enabled government police to burst into a private residence without knocking first. 

ZODIAC