From: parghi@envius.cs.uiuc.edu (Amit Parghi)
Subject: Re: this week's illegal wiretap
Followup-To: comp.org.eff.talk,alt.privacy
Organization: Tex & Edna Boil's Prairie Warehouse and Curio Emporium
Distribution: inet
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 20:40:44 GMT

Some USENET types wrote ...
    ># >Does anyone know how the FBI happened to tap this person?  
    ># Also note that this action by the FBI is precisely what the FBI said
    ># they wouldn't do with their proposed universal wiretapping ordinance.


wb8foz@skybridge.SCL.CWRU.Edu (David Lesher) wrote:
    >The Friday Washington Post had a front page story on this. The
    >difference between it and what I'm reading here is rapidly approaching
    >Shergold Urban Legend size......

As usual, a lot of USENET posters behave as though it's a capital offence to
post information that might possibly be construed as squaring with the facts.

The FBI was *not* involved in the "wiretapping;" the recording in question
was performed by the State Department.  Let me quote from page 8 of
Saturday's Times:

	    HIGH BUSH OFFICIAL IS LINKED TO SEARCH OF FILE ON CLINTON
				       --
			     UNDER SECRETARY NAMED
				       --
		   Dismissed Aide Says Passport Check Was Begun
			by Deputy Who Didn't Consult Her

    By ROBERT PEAR
    Special to The New York Times
    ...
	State Department officials confirmed that the agency's operations
    center had monitored some of Ms. [Elizabeth M.] Tamposi's telephone
    conversations with other Administration officials.  The monitoring was
    disclosed [Friday] by The Washington Post.  The conversations, which
    took place in the five weeks before the Presidential election, included
    discussions about Mr. Clinton's passport files, the officials said.
	The Federal Bureau of Investigation has opened an inquiry to see if
    the monitoring violated Federal wiretap statutes.

				`She Is Very Upset'
	Thomas C. Green, a lawyer for Ms. Tamposi, said today, "She was not
    aware at all that her calls were being monitored, and she is very upset
    about it."
	[State Department spokesman Richard A.] Boucher said [Deputy
    Secretary of State Lawrence S.] Eagleburger had ordered a halt to the
    unauthorized monitoring of telephone calls.  Under a new policy, issued
    Oct. 15, "the operations center monitors a phone call only when one
    party to the conversation requests that the operations center stay on
    the line," Mr. Boucher said.  The inspector general [of the State
    Department] "learned of the monitoring during its larger investigation"
    of passport records, Mr. Boucher said.
	The operations center contains sophisticated telecommunications
    equipment and routinely arranges phone calls for State Department
    officials.
	White House officials say the information obtained through such
    monitoring should not be used against Ms. Tamposi.  But State Department
    lawyers say the monitoring of her calls appears to have been legal.
	Federal law strictly regulates the use of electronic eavesdropping
    and makes clear that such surveillance is allowed if one party to a
    telephone conversation knows about it or has given "prior consent."
    Government lawyers said the "party" in this case was the owner of the
    phone, the State Department, not Ms. Tamposi.
	But an expert on communications and privacy law, David R. Johnson, a
    lawyer in Washington at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering, said an employer's
    authority to monitor an employee's phone conversations was a complex
    legal question.
	"A key ground rule is that en employer should establish policies
    governing use of communication facilities by employees and the
    monitoring of those facilities, and the employer ought to make clear to
    employees what those policies are," he said.
	State Department officials acknowledged that they had not always
    informed employees whose calls were monitored.
    ...

Followups redirected out of sci.crypt.

Amit