State-Sponsored Communications Interception
Facilitating Illegality

Abstract

This article suggests that, in the context of the UK and the USA, the uses of state- sponsored communications interception (i.e. wiretapping) practices directed against political, rather than criminal, policing have historically functioned outside prevailing legal frameworks and guidelines. Furthermore, it suggests that the abuse of communications interception by UK and US governmental agencies has been primarily facilitated by the intimate institutional interface between intelligence and law enforcement agencies on the one side, and communication service providers on the other. Thus, any debate around strengthening the legislative protections of privacy in the UK or the USA remains to a large extent uninformed, unless it considers the informal arrangements that have historically facilitated the abuse of citizens' privacy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Keywords:

• wiretapping
• civil liberties
• privacy
• telephony
• policing
• intelligence