EDITORIAL
No demonstrated need for wiretap changes

Rising national concerns about terrorism and the growing plague of ice-related crime at home in Hawai'i have driven authorities to seek new and better tools for their difficult job.

The frustration faced by law enforcement is real and understandable. But as always, there must be a balance between law-enforcement needs and citizen rights.

A case in point is the current drive to rewrite Hawai'i's rarely used wiretapping law.

As outlined by Yasmin Anwar on the front page of this section today, Hawai'i law places fairly stringent barriers in the way of obtaining a legal wiretap.

The biggest difference in the Hawai'i law, apparently, is that it requires an "adversary" hearing before a judge before a wiretap can be granted. Only Ohio joins Hawai'i with this requirement, authorities say.

Local law-enforcement officials want the law changed to do away with this adversarial hearing, which they say makes it next to impossible to get authority for a wiretap. But since wiretaps are so rarely requested, it is not clear that the system is broken.

As designed, it appears the adversary (a court-appointed attorney) is there primarily to see that due process is followed and that the grounds for the tap are not based on flimsy or hear-say evidence.

It would seem to us that a tap that passes this test has a much better chance of standing up in court under the pressure of sharp defense attorneys.

In any event, it would seem that the first step would be to demonstrate that legitimate, well-grounded wiretap requests are being rejected. At that point, perhaps, change might be warranted.