As Massachusetts general law currently stands, law enforcement may use a wiretap or a witness to record conversations only when the crime is linked to organized crime, and only when that organized crime narrowly includes “a continuing enterprise to supply illegal goods and services.” This is an extraordinarily limiting set of rules and circumstances, and they very often prevent the investigation and prosecution of many other serious crimes that fall outside of those definitions, such as hate crimes, civil rights violations, and illegal firearm trafficking.

This legislation would amend the current wiretapping law, which was passed in 1968, to update the technologies covered by the law and expand the authority of law enforcement to use these capabilities to investigate crimes such as illegal firearm trafficking, hate crimes, and civil rights violations. This legislation would not change the extremely rigorous process a wiretap request must go through, including who may request and authorize a wiretap, as well as the existing factors and high bar of exhaustion that needs to be met in order to request a wiretap.