In a 6-3 ruling, the Supreme Court of the United States recently upheld the right of a radio station to broadcast a tape recording of a cellular phone conversation, even though the act of recording the conversation was itself a crime.
In the case before the Court, somebody secretly recorded a 1993 cellular phone conversation between a teachers’ union negotiator and the president of the teachers union in Wyoming, Pennsylvania. In the conversation the negotiator threatened to commit acts of violence against recalcitrant school board members.
The tape of the conversation was left in the mailbox of Jack Yocum, who opposed the teacher’s union, and Yocum gave the tape to a local radio station which broadcast it repeatedly.
The negotiator and the head of the union sued arguing that the broadcast of the tape violated laws which made recording cellular telephone conversations illegal.
In a narrow ruling, the Supreme Court ruled that the media’s free speech right trumps the wiretap law, and as such the broadcast of the tape was legal.
In the majority opinion, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote, “A stranger’s illegal conduct does not suffice to remove the First Amendment shield from speech about a matter of public concern.”
In dissent, however, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist worried that the majority was ignoring the genuine privacy interests of people using cellular phones. “Surely the interest in individual privacy, at its narrowest must embrace the right to be free from surreptitious eavesdropping on, and involuntary broadcast of, our cellular telephone conversations,” Rehnquist wrote.
The debate over the balance between freedom and privacy is certain to be one that comes up repeatedly in the next few decades as technological innovations expand both people’s ability to communicate and the ability for such communications to be monitored surreptitiously.
Supreme Court rules First Amendment trumps wiretap law. The Associated Press, May 21, 2001.