The lists of telephone calls that are kept by local and long distance phone companies are available to law enforcement without any judicial intervention at all. Law enforcement gains access to hundreds of thousands of such telephone records each year, without a warrant and without even notice to the citizens involved. However, the burden or proof to be met by the government in such a proceeding is lower than required for access to the content of a communication. New protection for location-specific information available in cellular, PCS and other advanced networks Much of the electronic surveillance conducted by law enforcement today involves gathering telephone dialing information through a device known as a pen register. Authority to attach pen registers is obtained merely by asserting that the information would be relevant to a criminal investigation.
Courts have no authority to deny pen register requests.
This legislation offers significant new limits on the use of pen register data. Under this bill, when law enforcement seeks pen register information from a carrier, the carrier is forbidden to deliver to law enforcement any information which would disclose the location or movement of the calling or called party. This new limitation is a major safeguard which will prevent law enforcement from casually using mobile and intelligent communications services as nation-wide tracking systems. Bill does not preclude use of encryption Unlike previous Digital Telephony proposals, this bill places no obligation on telecommunication carriers to decipher encrypted messages, unless the carrier actually holds the key. The bill in no way prohibits citizens from using encryption.