Opinion ID: 784224
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Type of Communications Intercepted

Text: 25 Court orders in this case required the Company to assist the FBI in eavesdropping on conversations occurring inside a vehicle equipped with the System. An oral communication is defined in the Act, solipsistically, as any oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that such communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying such expectation. § 2510(2); see also Price v. Turner, 260 F.3d 1144, 1147-48 (9th Cir.2001) (cordless telephone calls are not oral communications because the communication is made via radio waves). In essence, an oral communication is one carried by sound waves, not by an electronic medium. S.Rep. No. 99-541, at 29 (1986), reprinted in 1986 U.S.C.C.A.N. 3555, 3567. The communications intercepted here were in-person voice communications, involving no means of transmission except for natural sound waves. Neither party disputes that the occupants of the vehicle reasonably expected that words spoken between them would be private, not subject to interception or transmission. The communications at issue therefore were oral communications within the ambit of the statute. 26 True, the FBI used wire communications via the System's cellular phone technology to intercept 11 the oral communications made within the vehicle. 12 The FBI, however, sought to intercept the oral communications between the occupants of the vehicle, not the wire communications between the vehicle's occupants and the Company. The manner in which the communication was intercepted does not change the fact that the FBI intercepted oral communications. As one House Report explained: 27 [t]he definitions of wire communication and oral communication are not mutually exclusive. Accordingly, different aspects of the same communication might be differently characterized. For example, a person who overhears one end of a telephone conversation by listening in on the oral utterances of one of the parties is intercepting an oral communication. If the eavesdropper instead taps into the telephone wire, he is intercepting a wire communication. 28 H.Rep. No. 99-647, at 34; see also United States v. Borch, 695 F.Supp. 898, 899, 901-02 (E.D.Mich.1988) (oral communications intercepted via inadvertently open phone line are not wire communications), rev'd on other grounds sub nom. United States v. Baranek, 903 F.2d 1068 (6th Cir.1990). 29 The Company contends that title III does not cover the interception of oral communications via a wire transmission. The statute, however, does include such interceptions within its purview. Both wiretapping and bugging are regulated under Title III. Dalia, 441 U.S. at 241 n. 1, 99 S.Ct. 1682 (citing §§ 2510(1) and (2)). Bugging includes the interception of all oral communication in a given location.... [T]his interception typically is accomplished by installation of a small microphone in the room to be bugged and transmission to some nearby receiver. Id. (emphasis added) (citations omitted). No reason appears why transmission through wire technology rather than in some other fashion does not fall under the ambit of title III.