Webster was sentenced to 3 years' probation. He got off lightly. Wiretapping and eavesdropping are crimes that could lead to 5 years in jail.

Recently Samuel Dash wrote a paper: Today We Face Another 'Watergate'. He is professor of law at Georgetown University. Dash believes the US government can use the Patriot Act to attack citizen's liberties. He opines: "We now face sweeping federal wiretapping, secret searches. and infiltration by FBI agents in our places of worship and in our social and political clubs and associations."

A crime to fight crime?

Federal wiretapping isn't new. Information from it made FBI boss, J Edgar Hoover tell President Kennedy over lunch one day to terminate his liaison with a certain young lady. She had links to organized crime. Did he listen? The telephone communications between Kennedy and the woman stopped immediately.

Hemant Lakhani, a Briton went on trial in Newark, N.J. He was accused of trying to sell Russian shoulder launched missiles to Islamic terrorists so they could shoot down a U.S. airliner. In December 2001 a "cooperating witness" under the control of a U.S. law enforcement officer began talking to Lakhani. They had more than 150 recorded conversations in the Urdu or Hindi language. The FBI recorded them through wiretapping. The defense argues "entrapment" but Lakhani would have sold to Al Qaeda.

By now you might be pondering if the end justifies the means. Most people who propose an easy answer to that quandary fall into two categories: the shallow thinkers or the politically polarized.

I won't risk stating my opinion here. What I will say about wiretapping and bugging is that, in most instances, the upright in heart have nothing to fear. Would you blush if this Sunday they played tapes of your phone calls in church?

Richard Hack wrote Puppetmaster: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover. Hack tried to show a dark and sinister side to Hoover. His chapter on Hoover's adversarial attitudes to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made me ponder how the personally righteous have nothing to fear from eavesdroppers.

The book made me curious. I found an article in Newsweek Magazine's archives. In January 1998 they wrote about the night before King's assassination. FBI bugs reportedly picked up hours of party chatter, the clinking of glasses and the sounds of illicit sex, including King's own cries. This wasn't an isolated incident. Hack accuses Hoover of great cruelty in that he played earlier recordings of bugged King affairs to President Lyndon Johnson.

Rev. Abernathy is in the famous photograph on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel Memphis with Hosea Williams, Jesse Jackson, and M. L. King Jr. the day before the shooting. In his book, "And the walls came tumbling down," he wrote: "Much has been written about my friend's weakness for women. (They) have told only the bare facts without suggesting the reasons why Martin might have indulged in such behavior. Martin and I were away more often than we were at home; and while this was no excuse for extramarital relations, it was a reason."

My premise is that wiretapping and bugging don't threaten those doing what's right. Paul told a young pastor: "Watch both your personal life and the doctrines you teach very closely." One of the biblical names for God is "You are the Lord Who sees me." You are Divinely wiretapped, so live right in those "private times." He's watching over you in love - make pleasing Him your highest priority and the rest of life will be OK.