Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 - Wiretaps

Wiretaps

It was passed in part as a response to the Supreme Court decisions Berger v. New York, 388 U.S. 41 (1967) and Katz v. United States, 389 U.S. 347 (1967), which the Church Committee Report on the FBI's COINTELPRO program described as holding "that the Fourth Amendment did apply to searches and seizures of conversations and protected all conversations of an individual as to which he had a reasonable expectation of privacy".

Section 2511(3) specifies that nothing in this act or the Federal Communications Act of 1934 shall limit the constitutional power of the President "to take such measures as he deems necessary ":

• "to protect the nation against actual or potential attack or other hostile acts of a foreign power, to obtain foreign intelligence information deemed essential to the security of the United States or to protect national security information against foreign intelligence activities"
• "to protect the United States against the overthrow of the Government by force or other unlawful means, or against any other clear and present danger to the structure or existence of the Government"

The section also limits use in evidence only where the interception was reasonable and prohibits disclosure except for purpose.

The Church report noted that "At no time, however, were the Justice Department's standards and procedures ever applied to NSA's electronic monitoring system and its 'watch listing' of American citizens. From the early 1960s until 1973, NSA compiled a list of individuals and organizations, including 1200 American citizens and domestic groups, whose communications were segregated from the mass of communications intercepted by the Agency, transcribed, and frequently disseminated to other agencies for intelligence purposes".