wire·tap

(wīr′tăp′)

1. An act of secretly listening to or recording a person's telephone or internet conversations, often as part of a police investigation.

2. A device that is connected to a communications circuit in a concealed fashion in order to enable a wiretap.

tr.v. wire·tapped, wire·tap·ping, wire·taps

1. To listen to or record in secret (a conversation carried on over a telephone line or other communications channel), often as part of a police investigation.

2. To wiretap the conversations on (a telephone line or other communications channel), often as part of a police investigation.

3. To wiretap the conversations of (a person) or the communications devices in (a place).

4. To connect a concealed listening or recording device to (a telephone line).

wire′tap′per n.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Noun

wiretapper - someone who wiretaps a telephone or telegraph wire

phone tapper, tapper

eavesdropper - a secret listener to private conversations

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References in periodicals archive

Wyner [3] introduced the wiretap channel, wherein a source could transmit confidential messages to a certain destination while keeping the messages hidden from a wiretapper. The maximum rate at which a source can transmit to its destination in the presence of an eavesdropper, called secrecy capacity, is [C.sub.s] = max{0, [C.sub.d]-[C.sub.e]}, where [C.sub.d] and [C.sub.e], which indicates the capacity of the link between the source and the destination as well as the capacity of the link between the source and the eavesdropper, respectively.

Cooperation based on decode-and-forward plus cooperative jamming for wireless physical layer security

Csiszar and Korner [3] studied the case of a broadcast channel with confidential messages, in which the sender transmits common information to both the legitimate receiver and the wiretapper in addition to the confidential information to the legitimate receiver.

Secure wireless communications via cooperative transmitting

The object is to transmit messages to the legitimate receiver, while keeping the wiretapper as ignorant of the messages as possible.

Wiretap channel in the presence of action-dependent states and noiseless feedback

The pirate wiretapper five minutes later wanted to give other directives, however air traffic controllers warned the planes and prevented a probable disaster.

TURKEY-PRESS SCAN (1)

* is subject to the same sanctions and remedies as the wiretapper or electronic eavesdropper.

Prohibitions

David Mogentale plays the role here--a wiretapper in possession of a harmless-sounding recording that may not be everything it seems to be.

The Conversation

Confederate General Jeb Stuart even had his own wiretapper with him in

Wiretapping before the wires: the post office and the birth of communications privacy

That precipitated a trip to the basement of the building, where we found a listening post--complete with an ashtray full of cigarette butts where the wiretapper had sat, soaked up the conversation, and smoked.

Who's listening? Electronic eavesdroppers have many ways to pick up your private conversations. Find out how to catch them

These three opinions disregarded, ignored, or minimized the appraisals of the professionals in the Secret Service (Bedard 1998, 5).(15) They were based on the premise that a president-or any one of us-would trust and permit a potential stool pigeon, informer, human "bug," squealer, snitch, or wiretapper to observe virtually every moment of our waking lives and to hear conversations with our family or guests that might abut on private or policy matters, even if we knew that he or she could be forced by a relentless prosecutor to disclose behavior that we might wish to conceal.

The Contemporary Presidency: Presidential Safety, Prosecutorial Zeal, and Judicial Blunders: The Protective Function Privilege