“For too long, Massachusetts has been among a small handful of states that hasn’t updated its wiretap laws to reflect advances in telecommunications or the evolution of crime trends. The statute on the books today was written almost 50 years ago, with rotary phones and La Cosa Nostra in mind. Communications technology and the landscape of criminal activity have changed since then, but the law has not.
“As the Chief Justice of our SJC noted six years ago, the wiretap statute’s efficacy is sharply limited by language that binds its use to cases involving organized crime. This makes it available to tackle high-level drug trafficking networks, but not the loosely-knit street gangs responsible for the vast majority of homicides in Boston and across the Commonwealth. As a result, it’s easier to get a wiretap for a drug dealer’s phone than it is for a murder suspect’s, and that just doesn’t make sense.
Massachusetts Secretary of Public Safety Daniel Bennett discusses a bill filed by Governor Charlie Baker to modernize the state’s wiretap statute for the first time since the era of rotary phones and La Cosa Nostra, when it was written.
“Fatal outdoor shootings are statistically the most difficult to solve and the most challenging to prosecute. There are no fingerprints, DNA, or trace evidence at the scene, our deployment of public safety cameras lags behind other big cities, and the percipient witnesses are either reluctant to come forward or associated with the offender. Without some kind of lead in a case like this, police and prosecutors too often hit a brick wall despite their best, most devoted efforts. This legislation would help us chip through that wall.
“It will also help us investigate human trafficking, a crime made easier than ever before by modern communications technology. It will help us identify and convict gun runners, drug traffickers, and those who would intimidate witnesses – using the offenders’ own words, in their own voices, from their own mouths.
“It will bring Massachusetts law out of the 1960s and into the 21st century without sacrificing any of the rigorous protections to our civil liberties that the current statute provides. I want to thank Governor Baker, Attorney General Healey, Secretary Bennett, and my fellow district attorneys for collaborating on this bill and I urge the Legislature to look favorably on it.”
–30–
All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
