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Karen Redmond , 202-502-2600
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April 30, 2007 — A total of 1,839 orders were issued by federal and state courts in 2006 authorizing or approving the interception of wire, oral or electronic communications, also known as wiretaps. This is a 4 percent increase over the 1,773 orders issued in 2005, according to The 2006 Wiretap Report. The complete report contains information on interceptions concluded between January 1, 2006 and December 31, 2006. A summary of the authorized intercepts reported for calendar years 1996-2006 is availabe in Table 7.

No applications for wiretap authorizations were denied by either state or federal courts in 2006. Seventy-nine percent of all wiretap applications approved by state judges were for just 4 states; 430 applications in California; 377 applications in New York; 189 applications in New Jersey, and 98 applications in Florida. Currently, the federal government, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, and 44 states have laws authorizing courts to issue orders permitting wire, oral, or electronic surveillance. Last year, 23 states and the federal government reported wiretap activity.

In 2006, the number of applications for intercepts submitted to state judges rose 20 percent to 1,378. The number of applications for interceptions submitted in 2006 to federal judges fell 26 percent to 461.

The Department of Justice notes that this apparent decrease in the reported use of wiretaps in federal investigations does not reflect a large number of complex and/or sensitive investigations that continued into 2007 "and thus could not be reported to the Department of Justice by the deadlines, as well as some federal investigations that were under court seal." It is DOJ's belief that had these matters been included, the data "would not reflect any perceptible decrease in the use of court-approved electronic surveillance by federal law enforcement agencies."

In 2006:

• the most common location specified in wiretap applications was a "portable device, carried by/on individual;"
• telephone intercepts (including land line, cellular, cordless and mobile) accounted for 96 percent of intercepts installed in 2006;
• 80 percent of all applications for intercepts cited a drug offense as the most serious offense under investigation;
• the state wiretap with the most intercepts occurred in New York County, New York with the interception of 105,000 messages, 75,000 of which were incriminating;
• 4,376 persons had been arrested, as of December 31, 2006, based on interceptions of wire, oral or electronic communications;
• 711 persons were convicted as of December 31, 2006, because of wiretaps terminated in 2006; and
• federal wiretaps were responsible for 51 percent of the arrests and 45 percent of the convictions arising from wiretaps during 2006.

Each federal and state judges is required to file a written report with the Director of the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts on each application for an order authorizing the interception of a wire, oral, or electronic communication (18 U.S.C. 2519(1)) . This report is to be furnished within 30 days of the denial of the application or the expiration of the court order. No report to the AO is required when an order is issued with the consent of one of the principal parties to the communication. Also, no report is required for the use of a pen register, unless used in conjunction with any wiretap devices whose use must be reported. This report does not include interceptions regulated by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978.

Prosecuting officials who applied for interception orders are required to submit reports to the AO each January on all orders terminated during the previous calendar years. However, the filing of some reports may be delayed to avoid jeopardizing ongoing investigations, or some reports may be received after the deadline. Missing reports will be included in next year's Wiretap Report.