wire tap

See also: wiretap and wire-tap

English

Noun

wire tap (plural wire taps)

1. Alternative form of wiretap
   • 2008, Alan Krohn, The Mind's Eye: A Novel, page 73:

     The young man felt a desire to take this further, to demand a court ordered wire tap.

   • 2013, Roy McMurtry, Memoirs and Reflections, page 108:

     The deputy commissioner then informed me that the OPP had learned the identity of the restaurant through a wire tap.

   • 2016, Chwan-Hwa (John) Wu, J. David Irwin, Introduction to Computer Networks and Cybersecurity, page 849:

     As indicated, IDS is performed through a wire tap, and is clearly an out-of-band operation.

Verb

wire tap (third-person singular simple present wire taps, present participle wire tapping, simple past and past participle wire tapped)

1. Alternative form of wiretap
   • 2010, Adrian A Andre, For the Sake of Evolution: The Indigo Child, page 2:

     It allowed the United States government to wire tap any communicational device, access the IP address of any computer's internet provider to track which websites its “insurgents” stumbled upon, and even inform government agents what books the citizens in "the land of the free" chose to rent.

   • 2011, Nafisa Hoodbhoy, Aboard the Democracy Train:

     "Not so fast," said officials of the US government, who deployed their National Security Agency (NSA) — tucked away behind clumps of trees along the Baltimore Washington parkway — to wire tap phone conversations between Benazir and her son Bilawal.

   • 2012, Glenn A. Sunness, The Guernica Project, page 628:

     They can wire tap, look for Durand, and put Mulrooney under surveillance.

Anagrams

• prewait, tie wrap