HARRISBURG — State lawmakers renewed Pennsylvania’s law on wiretapping, broadening the use of body cameras to include parole agents and corrections officers working in internal affairs as well as making it legal to record telemarketers and robocalls without their consent to enforce certain consumer protection laws.
The legislation ultimately extends the Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act through 2029. Without action, it would have expired at year’s end.
State representatives voted 181-22 late Tuesday night to concur on Senate amendments to House Bill 1278, moving the bill to the desk of Gov. Josh Shapiro to be signed into law. State senators had advanced the measure on Monday by a 40-8 margin.
Rep. Tim Bonner, R-Mercer/Butler, successfully amended the bill in September to add an exception to the wiretap law for the recording of telemarketers. Such recordings must occur only when fraud is suspected. Bonner told House members at the time that more than $40 billion is lost annually in telemarketing fraud. The amendment had received almost unanimous approval.
The bill doesn’t mandate that parole agents wear body cameras, it simply allows the option. The agent must be clearly identifiable and on official duty, using the camera for official business. They must be trained on camera use and must also provide prior written notice to parolees under their supervision that they could be recorded.
Those terms mostly mirror that for internal affairs investigators with the Department of Corrections with respect to being on duty, clearly identifiable and trained. A caveat is that without consent or a court order, they can’t record employees under investigation inside their own homes.
These recordings like that of other law enforcement aren’t publicly accessible under Pennsylvania’s Right to Know Law.
Bonner, a former county prosecutor, spoke on the House floor late Tuesday in support of the measure, describing the changes as a need to protect the safety of parole officers.
“Daily, they are meeting with the most violent criminal offenders in their homes, in parks, in streets and in cars. They need this protection to have a body camera on them to record the encounter,” Bonner said. “Parole officers were overlooked when this legislation was approved in 2017 because in fact, under the law, parole officers are deemed to be police officers and they should have the same protection.”
The House vote concurred with changes made in the Senate, stripping the bill of terms that would have restricted access to the recordings for other law enforcement and investigators without a warrant. Sharing information from intercepted conversations would also have been restricted to safeguard supervision operations and use at parole hearings, however, those terms were also stripped.
Pennsylvania is one of 11 states that require two-party consent, or all parties involved, for conversations to be legally recorded, according to the Digital Media Law Project.
Rep. Russ Diamond, R-Lebanon, said during floor remarks that he largely opposed the bill, mainly because of the wiretap act’s proposed expansion. But, he voted in favor of the bill Tuesday for a specific reason.
“It is the provision of Pennsylvania law that states if you call someone on the telephone they cannot record you without your permission. It is the provision of Pennsylvania law that states that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy and someone cannot surreptitiously record your conversations without your permission. That is a critical thing that makes Pennsylvania special and that absolutely needs to be renewed,” Diamond said.