18 U.S.C. § 3122 — Application for an order for a pen register or a trap and trace device

(a) This section only covers making the application; a judge decides separately whether to issue the order under section 3123. A government attorney may apply to a court for an order allowing a pen register or trap and trace device. This includes applying to extend an existing order. The application must be in writing, under oath. State law enforcement officers may make the same kind of application to a state court, unless state law forbids it. (b) The application must include the identity of the attorney or officer applying, and the law enforcement agency running the investigation. It must also include a certification that the information sought is relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation by that agency.

The record. According to the source credit, this section was added by Public Law 99-508, Title III, Section 301(a), enacted October 21, 1986, and published at 100 Stat. 1869. The credit line does not list any subsequent amendments, indicating the text has remained as originally enacted since that date. Historical context. Public Law 99-508 is the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, and Title III of that Act is commonly known as the Pen Register Act. This legislation is generally understood to have been Congress's response to the rapid growth of electronic communications technologies during the 1980s and the corresponding gaps in existing federal wiretap law, which had been designed primarily around voice telephone communications. The broader Act is often described as an effort to extend privacy protections and set procedural standards for law enforcement access to newer forms of electronic communication and transactional data, including the non-content dialing and signaling information captured by pen registers and trap and trace devices. Beyond this general understanding of the Act's purpose, the record does not establish the specific legislative reasoning behind the particular application and certification requirements set out in this section. Any more detailed account of why Congress structured the application process in this precise manner would go beyond what the statutory text and source credit support, and no such claim is made here.