Privacy: An Overview of Federal Statutes Governing Wiretapping and Electronic Eavesdropping

Book excerpt: This is an outline of two federal statutes: the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). Both have evolved out of the shadow of the Supreme Court's Fourth Amendment jurisprudence. The courts play an essential role in both. Congress crafted both to preserve the ability of government officials to secure information critical to the nation's well-being and to ensure individual privacy. It modeled parts of FISA after features in ECPA. There are differences, however. ECPA protects individual privacy from the intrusions of the activities of foreign powers and their agents, whether those activities are criminal or not. ECPA's only concern is crime.