Bugged

It's easy to laugh off reports of wiretapping. After numerous reports of bugged telephones, most people know better than to give sensitive information over the phone. Some officials are so suspicious of telephones they avoid mentioning their names even in innocuous phone conversations.

So if you know what information is not for giving over the telephone, and if you have nothing to hide, why worry about people who make it a business to eavesdrop on your conversations? Because it's an invasion of privacy, which is generally illegal in a free country. So what if you're just discussing the latest gym equipment or health food craze? Just as you don't want a stranger butting in when you're talking with a friend, you don't relish the idea of some creep eavesdropping on your telephone conversation. The law allows wiretapping to catch crooks, but not to harass critics of the government.

Members of the opposition in the House of Representatives say a recent sweep of their office telephones showed the units were tapped. The telephone company has denied involvement in the wiretapping but did not rule out eavesdroppers getting into the company's system. Yesterday, some opposition members voiced suspicions that the tapping was done by the Philippine National Police. It's not the first time that the PNP has been accused of illegal wiretapping. Last year there were reports from intelligence sources that the PNP was tapping the telephones of thousands of people, with more than 300 in a priority list. The PNP denied the reports.

In the United States, Richard Nixon was forced to resign as president after a series of scandals that started with the arrest of five men carrying electronic eavesdropping devices in the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic Party national committee. In this country, allegations of wiretapping have never been exhaustively investigated. No one has ever been punished, although there is a law against illegal wiretapping. Even as we laugh off reports of wiretapping, we should not ignore an opportunity to stop it and punish the eavesdroppers. Invasion of privacy is not amusing, except for those who want to turn the country into a police state.