wiretap

n. using an electronic device to listen in on telephone lines, which is illegal unless allowed by court order based upon a showing by law enforcement of "probable cause" to believe the communications are part of criminal activities. Use of wiretap is also a wrongful act for which the party whose telephones were tapped may sue the party performing the act and/or listening in as an invasion of privacy or for theft of information. A wiretap differs from a "bug" which is a radio device secretly placed in one's premises to listen in on conversations or to tape incoming calls without notice to the caller. The same rules of illegality and tort liability apply to "bugging." (See: probable cause, invasion of privacy)

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References in periodicals archive

(i) How about the security of these channel models in the presence of a wiretapper?

Measuring wiretapper's uncertainty about the transmitted message by equivocation, the capacity-equivocation regions of the model of Figure 6 are provided both for the case where the channel input is allowed to depend noncausally on the state sequence and the case where it is restricted to causal dependence.

Wiretap channel in the presence of action-dependent states and noiseless feedback

Single source single destination model: define source as Alice, destination as Bob, Calvin as wiretapper. Adversary Calvin eavesdrops on a few channels to obtain information sent from Alice to Bob.

Wiretapper exists in system and wiretaps on intermediate nodes.

Security analysis and evaluation of random linear network coding under wiretapping attack

To begin to comprehend why CALEA represents a regulatory sea change and how this change bears on the effects the statute is likely to have, it is necessary to remind ourselves once again what life for government wiretappers and telecommunications carriers was like before the supposed necessity of enacting CALEA occurred to law enforcement.

The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994: a surprising sequel to the break up of AT&T

No one gadget will protect you from all wiretappers.

Espionage 101 ... and much more

Once authorized, such intrusions are difficult to limit, particularly when the wiretappers want to hear everything, as is often the case.

The intrusive ears of the law