
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, November 2, 1995                   TAG: 9511020101
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FBI PROPOSES WIRETAP SYSTEM

The FBI has proposed a national wiretapping system of unprecedented size and scope that would give law enforcement officials the capacity to monitor simultaneously as many as one out of every 100 phone lines in some high-crime areas of the country.

Such a surveillance ability would vastly exceed the current needs of law enforcement officials around the country, who in recent years have conducted an annual average of less than 850 court-authorized wiretaps - or fewer than one in every 174,000 phone lines.

The plan, which needs congressional approval for the money to finance it, still would require a court warrant to conduct wiretaps. Still, the proposed expansion of the government's eavesdropping abilities raises questions among telephone industry executives as to why the FBI believes it may require such broad access to the nation's phone network in the future.

And privacy-rights advocates see the specter of a Big Brother surveillance capability whose very existence might encourage law enforcement officials to use wiretapping much more frequently as an investigative tool.

``A proposal that envisions some form of electronic surveillance for one of every 100 telephone lines would be frightening to many people,'` said James Dempsey, deputy director at the Center for National Security, a public policy organization in Washington, D.C. ``I think law enforcement needs to be honest with the public about what its intentions are.''

Generally, FBI officials contend that an advanced, high-capacity monitoring system will be necessary as more of modern life and business - and crime - takes place as voice or computer conversations over digital phone lines.

On digital lines, communications are transmitted in electronic pulses represented by the 1s and 0s of computer code. Such communications are harder to monitor than with the old-fashioned analog lines in which conversations are transmitted as electronic signals corresponding to audible sound waves.

An FBI spokesman declined to elaborate on the bureau's perceived need for such an expansion of its wiretapping abilities.

``The full implementation is absolutely essential for law enforcement and public safety,'' said Mike Kortan, an FBI spokesman in Washington.

by CNB