ABSTRACT
Electronic eavesdropping, which includes wiretapping, consists of attempts by the government to intercept private communications through any kind of electronic transmission–—including telephones, cell phones, voice mail, e-mail, other computer transmissions, pagers, and the like. Early inventions such as the telephone challenged people's conceptions of privacy and what constituted an unreasonable search and seizure in the context of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. With the advent of electronic telecommunications, the Supreme Court was left to answer the question of whether telephone communications counted as being within the castle. Justice Louis D. Brandeis dissented, promising "the progress of science in furnishing the Government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping." In 1934, Congress passed the Federal Communications Act, section 605 of which, though the act failed to outlaw wiretapping completely, prohibited "intercepting and divulging" telecommunications.
