Time to bring state wiretap law into the 21st century

With his time in office winding down, Gov. Charlie Baker has decided to mount another effort to pass previously stalled law-enforcement surveillance legislation.

The governor has refiled his bill, first submitted in 2017, that would give law enforcement more leeway in utilizing wiretapping resources to investigate a wider range of violent crimes.

“As technology evolves and the public safety landscape changes, so too should the tools we use to keep our communities safe,” Baker said of the existing laws, passed in 1968 to target organized crime.

“The common-sense changes to the wiretap statute we are again proposing today would finally update this 50-year-old statute to recognize that law enforcement should be able to use the same tools to solve a murder committed because of racial hatred or gang affiliation that they use to solve a murder committed in connection with organized crime.”

The state’s existing, archaic wiretap law operates light years removed from the digital age in which we now live.

Now the crooks can take advantage of all the technological advances available to disseminate information — like texting and Snapchat — while police lag 50 years behind.

Plus, that wiretap authorization retains a far too limited focus.

To remedy this crimefighting imbalance, we must expand the kinds of offenses subject to the wiretap law, and allow authorities to view information generated on smartphones and other computer-facilitated communications.

This proposed update would allow law enforcement, under “strict judicial supervision,” to use wiretaps for a variety of suspected crimes, including weapons charges, arson, assault and battery, sex trafficking, gang affiliation, kidnapping, possession of explosives and murder.

The bill would also include updated definitions to reference modern technologies like cellphones and satellite, to explicitly include communications between out-of-state parties about instate crime, and authorize translators to monitor communications.

Because the state has some of the strictest wiretapping standards in the country, it requires state law enforcement to partner with federal agencies to investigate certain crimes, said Westford resident Dennis Galvin, a retired State Police major and current president of the Massachusetts Association for Professional Law Enforcement.

“The key detail is to make sure that the reporting requirements and the oversight to the judges are maintained,” Galvin told the Boston Herald.

Earlier attempts to broaden the scope of wiretaps have failed in the Legislature, primarily over privacy concerns.

And that’s the state

ACLU’S problem with this legislation.

“Expanding surveillance powers to enable wiretapping of private communications in investigations not related to ‘organized crime’ would have far-reaching negative effects on Bay Staters’ civil rights and civil liberties,” said Kade Crockford, director of the Technology for Liberty program at the ACLU of Massachusetts.

We understand the sensitivity to assaults on personal privacy, but unfortunately technology has virtually eroded that expectation.

Under strict judicial supervision, a revised and expanded wiretap law would benefit all law-abiding citizens.

And as Attorney General Maura Healey told the Associated Press back in 2017, updating the wiretap law simply recognizes the new reality of cellphones and text messages.

We urge lawmakers to accept this new reality, and pass this improved wiretap law.