Patrick Leahy: “we took an important step in the last Congress to preserve law enforcement's wiretapping tool and increase privacy…”

“we took an important step in the last Congress to preserve law enforcement's wiretapping tool and increase privacy protection for our telephone and computer communications by passing the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. This law expanded privacy protection to cordless telephones, restricted the ability of law enforcement to obtain transactional information from e- mail messages, and improved the privacy of mobile phones by expanding criminal penalties for stealing the service from legitimate users. This new law also imposed new requirements to ensure that court orders for electronic surveillance can be carried out, rather than stymied by new technologies used on our telephone networks. Significantly, these new requirements for our Nation's telephone networks were accompanied by guidelines designed to bring public oversight and accountability to the process of implementing them. For the first time, decisions on how new and existing telecommunications systems will remain accessible to government surveillance must be made in the sunshine of public scrutiny.”