Wiretapping de-regulation a big waste: Texas judges approve few warrants for phone surveillance

by Scott Henson of Grits For Breakfast

I've written that Texas' proposed expansion of wiretapping authority is a solution looking for a problem, and here are the stats to prove it. SB 823 by Whitmire/Riddle would give the state's six largest police departments - Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Austin, and El Paso - authority to operate pen registers and cell-phone wiretapping equipment. Each department under the bill would be authorized to purchase their own wiretapping equipment and train their own officers to use it.

But according to wiretapping statistics reported annually to the Department of Justice, four of these six departments did not engage in a single wiretap between 1998 and 2005, the last year for which statistics are available. In no year did Texas judges approve more than five wiretaps, and a couple of years none were authorized in the entire state!

So why should local taxpayers in these six cities pay for training and equipment when wiretapping is so rarely used in Texas? Right now the Department of Public Safety manages all wiretaps statewide, and given the low volume involved - and the fact that most big city PDs aren't using wiretaps - it doesn't make a lot of sense to create redundant capacity at these six agencies.

Here are the last several years' statistics reported to the Department of Justice about Texas wiretapping: