This report covers wiretaps concluded between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2025, that were reported properly to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts.1 This report also provides supplementary information reported to the AO on arrests and convictions resulting from wiretaps concluded in prior years.
Forty-eight jurisdictions (the federal government, the District of Columbia, the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, and 44 states) currently have laws that authorize courts to issue orders permitting wire, oral, or electronic surveillance. Table 1 shows that a total of 25 jurisdictions (including state and federal entities) reported using at least one of these types of surveillance as an investigative tool during 2025.
Summary and Analysis of Reports by Judges
The number of federal and state wiretaps reported in 2025 decreased 24 percent from 2024. A total of 1,735 wiretaps were reported as authorized in 2025, with 873 authorized by federal judges and 862 authorized by state judges. Compared with the applications approved during 2024, the number approved by federal judges decreased 32 percent in 2025, and the number approved by state judges decreased 14 percent.
In 2025, authorized wiretaps by federal agencies declined, which explains in part the downturn in wiretap authorizations this year. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) reported the largest decrease in wiretap authorizations, a drop from 1,157 in 2024 to 416 in 2025. As reported by the DEA, that agency had resolved a historic backlog of wiretap cases during 2024, so this year’s total reflects a return to that agency’s operational baseline. Also, the Investigations Office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported only 23 wiretaps in 2025 compared with 133 in 2024. It attributed this reduction to factors including operational delays arising from government shutdowns in 2025, and changes in administration enforcement and prosecutorial priorities, and staffing attrition and reorganization pursuant to administrative guidance.
In 24 states, a total of 101 separate local jurisdictions (including counties, cities, and judicial districts) reported wiretap applications for 2025. Applications concentrated in six states (California, New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and North Carolina) accounted for 81 percent of all state wiretap applications.
Seventy-one federal jurisdictions submitted reports of wiretap applications for 2025. The District of Colorado authorized the most federal wiretaps, approximately 6 percent of the applications approved by federal judges.
Federal judges and state judges reported the authorization of 249 wiretaps and 80 wiretaps, respectively, for which the AO received no corresponding data from prosecuting officials. Wiretap Tables A-1 and B-1 contain information from judge and prosecutor reports submitted for 2025. The entry “NP” (no prosecutor’s report) appears in these tables whenever a prosecutor’s report was not submitted. Some prosecutors may have delayed filing reports to avoid jeopardizing ongoing investigations. Some of the prosecutors’ reports require additional information to comply with reporting requirements or were received too late to include in this document. Information about these wiretaps should appear in future reports.
Wiretap Orders, Extensions, and Locations
Table 2 presents the number of wiretap orders issued in each jurisdiction that provided reports, the number of extensions granted, the average lengths of the original periods authorized and any extensions, the total number of days in operation, and the locations of the communications intercepted. Federal and state laws limit the period of surveillance under an original order to 30 days. This period, however, can be lengthened by one or more extensions if the authorizing judge determines that additional time is justified.
During 2025, the average reported length of an original authorization was 30 days, the same as in 2024. The average reported length of an extension was also 30 days. In total, 1,242 extensions were reported as requested and authorized in 2025, a decrease of 22 percent from the prior year. The Central District of California (CA-C) conducted the longest federal wiretap that was terminated in 2025. One original order in CA-C was extended 10 times to complete a 330-day wiretap used in an illegal drugs investigation. An order in the District of Maryland was extended 6 times to complete a 190-day wiretap in a narcotics investigation. For state intercepts terminated in 2025, the longest wiretap occurred in Queens, New York, where an original order was extended 10 times to complete a 327-day wiretap used in an illegal drugs investigation.
Most orders reported in 2025 did not specify the location of the communication intercepted. Given that the location of a mobile telephone can change, the most commonly reported communications intercepted where the location was not specified were made using cellular or mobile telephones. In 2025, a total of 94 percent of all authorized wiretaps (1,633 wiretaps) did not specify the location of the communication intercepted.
Criminal Offenses
Drug offenses were the most prevalent type of criminal offenses investigated using reported wiretaps. Table 3 indicates that 51 percent of all applications for wiretaps (887 wiretap applications) in 2025 cited narcotics as the most serious offense under investigation. Applications citing narcotics combined with applications citing other offenses, which include other offenses related to drugs, accounted for 83 percent of all reported wiretap applications in 2025. Conspiracy, the second-most frequently cited crime, was specified in 7 percent of applications. Homicide and Assault, the third-largest category, was specified as the most serious offense in approximately 6 percent of applications. Many applications for court orders revealed that multiple criminal offenses were under investigation, but Table 3 includes only the most serious criminal offense listed on an application.
Lengths and Numbers of Wiretaps
In 2025, reported installed wiretaps were in operation for an average of 47 days, the same as the average in 2024. The federal wiretap with the most intercepts occurred during a murder investigation in the Eastern District of California and resulted in the interception of 298,626 messages in 90 days. The state wiretap with the most intercepts was a 98-day wiretap for a narcotics investigation in Hampden, Massachusetts, which resulted in the interception of 315,815 messages. See Table A-1 and Table B-1 for data on lengths and numbers of intercepts.
Encryption
The number of state wiretaps reported in which encryption was encountered decreased from 258 in 2024 to 229 in 2025. In 217 of these wiretaps, officials were unable to decipher the plain text of the messages. A total of 296 federal wiretaps were reported as being encrypted in 2025, of which 269 could not be decrypted.
Cost of Wiretaps
Table 5 provides a summary of expenses related to wiretaps in 2025. The expenditures noted reflect the costs of installing wiretap devices and monitoring communications for the 804 authorizations for which reports included cost data. The average cost of a wiretap in 2025 was $92,963, up 15 percent from the average cost in 2024. In the 9th Judicial Circuit of Florida, the consolidated cost of a series of state wiretaps conducted to investigate a narcotics offense was $2,179,043. For federal wiretaps for which expenses were reported in 2025, the average cost was $98,716, an 12 percent decrease from 2024. The wiretap with the largest reported cost occurred in the Eastern District of Michigan, where the cost of a 90-day federal wiretap in an illegal drugs investigation totaled $2,806,000.
Methods of Surveillance
The three major categories of surveillance are wire, oral, and electronic communications. Table 6 presents the type of surveillance method used for each wiretap installed. The most common method reported was wire surveillance, which accounted for 49 percent (681 cases) of the intercepts installed in 2025.
Arrests and Convictions
Data on individuals arrested and convicted as a result of wiretaps reported as terminated is presented in Table 6. As of December 31, 2025, a total of 5,633 persons had been arrested (up 3 percent from 2024), and 503 persons had been convicted (down 30 percent from 2024). Federal wiretaps were responsible for 36 percent of the arrests and 23 percent of the convictions arising from wiretaps for this period. The Eastern District of California reported the most arrests for a federal district in 2025, with wiretaps there resulting in the arrest of 430 individuals. The Southern District of West Virginia reported the most convictions for a federal district in 2025, with wiretaps there resulting in the conviction of 27 individuals. State wiretaps were responsible for 64 percent of the arrests and 77 percent of the convictions arising from wiretaps for this period. The Ninth Judicial Circuit of Florida reported the largest number of arrests (869) and Suffolk, New York, had the most convictions (142) arising from state wiretaps in 2025.
Summary of Reports for Years Ending December 31, 2015, through December 31, 2025
Table 7 presents data on wiretaps requested and authorized each year from 2015 to 2025. Total authorized intercept applications reported by year decreased 58 percent from 4,148 in 2015 to 1,735 in 2025. Most wiretaps during that period were used for narcotics investigations, which accounted for 79 percent of intercepts authorized in 2015 (3,292 applications) and 51 percent in 2025 (887 applications). Table 9 presents the total number of arrests and convictions resulting from intercepts terminated in calendar years 2015 through 2025. It includes data on wiretaps conducted in 2025 as well as data on wiretaps conducted previously but reported in later years. This data also is represented in the chart below.
Supplementary Reports
Under 18 U.S.C. § 2519(2), prosecuting officials must file supplementary reports on additional court or police activity occurring as a result of wiretaps reported in prior years. Because many wiretap orders are related to large-scale criminal investigations that cross county and state boundaries, supplemental reports are necessary to fulfill reporting requirements. Arrests, trials, and convictions resulting from these interceptions often do not occur within the same year in which the intercepts are first reported. Table 8 shows that 1,341 arrests, 1,217 convictions, and additional costs of $6,853,712 arose from and were reported for wiretaps completed in previous years. Sixty-two percent of the supplemental reports of additional activity in 2025 involved wiretaps terminated in 2024. Wiretaps concluded in 2024 led to 80 percent of arrests, 47 percent of convictions, and 95 percent of expenditures noted in the supplementary reports.
1Reports of wiretaps submitted to the AO using forms WT-2A or WT-2B that passed all of the AO’s data quality checks were considered complete data submissions and are included in the Wiretap Report. When reports failed the AO’s data quality checks and thus were not complete data submissions, the wiretaps reported were not entered into the AO’s database, as the reports raised data quality issues significant enough to interfere with the AO’s ability to process the report. Reports of wiretaps that are not complete data submissions are not included in the Wiretap Report.