What are the different kinds of phone wiretaps?
Broadly speaking, there are two types of telephone wiretaps. The first is when a law enforcement official listens directly to a target’s phone calls. The other type of tap looks at the general traffic patterns of communication–when are calls made, to whom, for how long. How is the direct tapping done, when an agent is listening to your calls? For every land line, a pair of copper wires runs from your house to your phone company’s “central office” in your neighborhood. This central office is where your phone call is routed to whom you are calling. Before the early 1990s, local police enforcement wiretaps were done on the local loop—”physically between the central office and you,” says Landau. Law enforcement agencies would intercept the copper wires that ran from your house to the central office and would attach another pair of wires that went to police headquarters. Matt Blaze explains old-style wiretapping: (mp3) But, in the last 15 years or so, the system has changed. Now the phone
