Court Opinion

ID: 9721854
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 09:10:55.497103+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:28.921926
License: Public Domain

Hennessey, C.J.
(concurring). I concur in both the result and the reasoning of the court. I think it useful to add a few separate comments directed toward the dissenting opinion. The dissent raises issues which simply are not before the court. The court was asked to decide merely the issue *595whether a judge of the Superior Court had authority to issue an order compelling the telephone company to assist the district attorney by installing a device which identified and recorded the numbers of telephones used to make incoming calls. The telephone company did not raise, indeed may have had no standing to raise, the issue whether the constitutional rights of any of its subscribers had been violated. Nevertheless, the dissent seems to sound Fourth Amendment alarms with regard to two classes: first, the users of the primary telephone, and, second, the users of telephones making calls to the primary telephone. I agree with the court that these issues are not presented by this appeal, but since they have been raised by the dissent, I address them briefly.
The dissent’s concern for the primary telephone user clearly jousts with windmills. Everything we have said relevant to this issue indicates that installation of a number recording device may be made only by compliance with the State wiretap statute, G. L. c. 272, § 99, which parallels the Federal statute and supports Fourth Amendment and similar State considerations. See New England Tel. & Tel. Co. v. District Attorney for the Norfolk Dist., 374 Mass. 569, 573 (1978). See also Commonwealth v. Vitello, 367 Mass. 224, 279 n.33 (1975) (pen register may be installed only upon showing of probable cause with regard to prim-ary telephone).1
The dissent’s second premise, that probable cause must be shown as to a particular telephone or telephones which generate calls to the primary telephone, raises considerations which I thought had been laid to rest both by a long series of Federal and State cases (see, e.g., cases collected in Commonwealth v. Vitello, supra at 244-245 n.5; cf. Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735, 741-746 [1979]), and by the comprehensive Federal and State wiretap statutes. See Ti-*596tie III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510-2520 (1976); G. L. c. 272, § 99. The dissent seems to argue broadly against permitting any interceptions or number recordings if any call to the primary telephone might emanate from a telephone as to which probable cause had not been established as a basis for the warrant. While that proposition may be a valid one for reexamination in an appropriate case, I would not give it serious consideration. Such a restriction would for practical reasons eliminate virtually all wiretaps, despite their compliance with the existing legal safeguards.

 Although, as the opinion of the court indicates, the Supreme Court does not consider use of pen registers a search within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, Smith v. Maryland, 442 U.S. 735 (1979), we are free to adopt a broader definition of search under art. 14 of the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights. See Commonwealth v. Vitello, 367 Mass. 224, 247 (1975).