Communications: Plugging the Big Ear

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Hardly anyone can be wholly certain that his confidential conversations are not being overheard or recorded. A microphone can be hidden in a ballpoint pen, a tape recorder made to look like a pack of cigarettes, a radio transmitter planted in a sugar bowl. Despite this rapid growth of electronic eavesdropping, federal and state laws protecting individual privacy are almost nonexistent.

Last week the Federal Communications Commission moved part way to plug the bug. An FCC order banning private use of radio devices to intercept private conversations—with a maximum fine of $500 a day for convicted snoopers—applies to scores of bugging techniques. Not affected is eavesdropping apparatus that does not use radio, such as a microphone connected by wire to a hidden listening post, or a disguised tape recorder. Law-enforcement agencies are exempt from the ban though still subject to local laws and regulations.

The Senate Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure, which has been holding hearings on electronic snooping for the past year, approved the ruling, but maintains that federal laws are still needed to outlaw such practices entirely. Meanwhile, the FCC edict will help, as Chairman E. William Henry put it, to protect "the little man from the big ear."