The Legislative Policy of Iran and America on Auditory Monitoring: the Effect of Security-Oriented Thinking

Auditory monitoring is one of the most obvious manifestations of interference in people’s privacy. Due to the importance of people's privacy in all human societies at different times and geography influenced by different cultures and ideologies, the criminal policymaking of all countries have always contained a chapter regarding this issue to systematize several types of monitoring. Because of the very nature of auditory and visual observations, the legislative system of countries cannot prohibit them totally because they are involved in the detection of crime in important and fundamental areas, to which the states are authorized to monitor. Yet, there is the issue of individual privacy the interference in which must be prohibited by law. The main question of this study contains the issue of the authorized and unauthorized fields of audio surveillance in the case law of Iran, and that, how the Iranian juridical-oriented law and the American exclusively security-oriented law affect the evolutionary process of the two countries' legislative policy. This study is aimed at developing a comparative study in the field of security and creating dominance on the performance of the opponent side in this regard. The present study is a comparative study conducted through descriptive-analytical method. To summarize, legislative policies of Iran and America in the field of monitoring followed similar approaches in regard with the issue of monitoring until September 11 when the Patriotic Law was passed for the so-called security and antiterrorism measures. This security-oriented policy followed a quite reverse policy and the privacy of individuals all over the globe was seriously challenged. However, due to the prohibition of jurisprudence and Sharia, no change took place in the Iranian policy.