History of Phone Tapping
“There is nothing we like to communicate to others as much as the seal of secrecy together with what lies under it.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
The term ‘phone tapping’ also means wiretapping or interception of phone. It was first started in U.S.A in 1890s after the invention of telephone recorder. Although, the Supreme Court of U.S.A. didn't become a valid law until 1928, at the height of Prohibition. Roy Olmstead, a Seattle bootlegger, was convicted on the basis of evidence congregated by tapping a phone in his home.
He then stated that, the authorities had violated his fundamental rights but the court upheld his conviction, stating that tapping somebody's phone is not a physical incursion of privacy. Prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor and the ensuing ingress of the United States into World War II, the U.S. House of Representatives held hearings on the legitimacy of interception of telephone for national defense. Important legislation and judicial decisions on the validity and constitutionality of wiretapping had taken place years before World War II. Conversely, it took on new urgency at that time of national crisis. In the case “Katz v. United States”, Supreme Court of U.S. stated that wiretapping requires a warrant. In 1978, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was created for issuing wiretap warrants in national security cases.
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