Wired for an update

Fifty years is long enough to wait for Beacon Hill to update the state law regulating the use of wiretaps in criminal investigations. It’s time for the House and Senate to quit stalling.

Gov. Charlie Baker yesterday joined a long line of elected officials who have sought to update the state law authorizing electronic surveillance in criminal cases, which at present focuses on old-fashioned landline telephones and the Mafia.

The law allows prosecutors to seek a judge’s permission for a wiretap only when an offense is committed “in connection with organized crime.” That restriction hamstrings police and prosecutors, stripping them of a vital tool they could use to investigate and solve major crimes involving gangs, guns and drugs.

The bill filed by Baker would expand the list of designated offenses that may be investigated with a wiretap when committed in connection with organized crime — and would also allow electronic surveillance in cases of murder, manslaughter, rape and other serious crimes, even if they have nothing to do with organized crime.

The bill also updates the definition of wire communications to include “modern wireless and computer-facilitated electronic communications” — cellphones, text messages and email, basically — rather than just landlines.

Attorneys general and district attorneys have sought this change for decades (Attorney General Maura Healey is on board with Baker’s proposal, as are all of the DAs).

But they’ve hit pockets of powerful resistance in the Legislature, with some lawmakers raising overheated concerns about prosecutorial overreach and the threat to individual privacy rights.

But the wiretap isn’t automatic. A neutral judge must still sign off on the use of electronic surveillance, and then only if other avenues for gathering evidence have been exhausted.

The bottom line is that prosecutors are using 20th century tools to fight 21st century crimes. Members of the Legislature who have opposed this update have run out of excuses.