Wiretapping has headlined the news for months, with President Bush staunchly defending his warrantless surveillance program as integral to the fight against terrorism, despite charges that it is unconstitutional.

Now it also has become a major issue locally, in the race for the Democratic nomination for Bristol County district attorney between incumbent Paul Walsh and his challenger, Fall River attorney Sam Sutter.

The tool, which law enforcement officials use to secretly listen to the telephone conversations of suspects, has a long history in America.

During the Civil War, officials under President Lincoln mined intercepted telegrams for intelligence. Since 1928, when the Supreme Court ruled that wiretapping with a warrant is constitutional, it has been a weapon in the arsenal of crime fighting. For decades, the FBI has used it against everyone from mobsters to the Rev. Martin Luther King.

Since announcing his candidacy in March, Sutter -- who from 1991 to 1999 was one of Walsh's assistant district attorneys -- has consistently lambasted his opponent for the `` egregious mistake'' of `` abandoning'' the eavesdropping tool. Sutter believes wiretaps could play a key role in targeting violent gangs, particularly in Fall River and New Bedford.

He says Walsh has not requested a signal wiretap warrant since he took office in 1991, a charge Walsh says he cannot confirm or deny.

`` We've got to start using court-ordered wiretaps,'' Sutter said. `` It's not been done, for some inexplicable reason, for the 16 years that Paul Walsh has been in office.''

Sutter later speculated that he could `` think of only one reason why (Walsh) wouldn't do that: that it's an infringement of our civil liberties. But good and decent citizens have no problem with a court-ordered wiretap.''

But at a debate in Attleboro on June 8, Walsh called Sutter's charge `` baloney,'' and accused the challenger of promoting `` outdated'' methods.

`` You're right; we're not using old-fashioned wiretaps from the 1980s,'' the four-term incumbent shot back. `` We're using new technology. Times have changed, and your newest idea is one from 1986.''

A major part of the disagreement is actually a matter of semantics. The two campaigns do not even agree on how to define a wiretap.

In an interview, Walsh clarified his view, and explained why he believes wiretaps are outdated.

`` The classic wiretap -- which is what my opponent is usually referring to -- that used to be done in the '80s, was where you physically attach something to a wire,'' he said. `` You basically splice into a telephone line. And then you listen to the calls that come in on a telephone line. That is the strict definition of a wiretap.''

`` We don't use wiretaps anymore,'' he added, `` because most of the criminals are not using telephones that have wires attached to them.'' But Raynham Police Chief Lou Pacheco, who has endorsed Sutter, said Walsh's characterization of a wiretap is misleading.

Walsh `` is completely, absolutely trying to fool people,'' Pacheco said. `` He has no concept of what a wiretap is. He said you needed wires to do a wiretap. That's totally untrue.''

Pacheco, president of the Washington-based High Tech Crime Consortium, said a wiretap is `` any and all court-ordered, legally intercepted communications.''

`` Use the words `court-ordered intercept' -- that's what we use,'' he said. `` But people know it as `wiretaps.' ''

The two campaigns are not the only sources that do not agree on the definition of a wiretap: Merri Today the term is a part of popular culture, where it is associated with any sort of communications surveillance, rather than the narrower definition of tapping into a wired device.

And for his part, Walsh admitted that `` there are probably different definitions.''

Walsh prefers the more precise term `` electronic surveillance.''

`` You can intercept a cell phone call, but that is not a wiretap; there are no wires,'' he said. `` It's electronic surveillance.''

The Massachusetts law allowing electronic surveillance dates back to 1925, and it never mentions the word `` wiretap'' at all.

Instead, the statute, last revised in 1968, is written to cover `` any communication made ... by the aid of wire, cable, or other like connection between the point of origin and the point of reception.''

Today, it is used to eavesdrop on cell phone conversations, as well.

The law's main emphasis, however, is on protecting privacy, which has always been a major concern when it comes to government surveillance.

`` The uncontrolled development and unrestricted use of modern electronic surveillance devices,'' it says, `` pose grave dangers to the privacy of all citizens of the commonwealth.''

To prevent abuses, the statute only allows officials to use wiretaps in investigations of organized crime.

But according to John Reinstein, Legal Director for the ACLU of Massachusetts, the state Supreme Judicial Court has long defined organized crime broadly.

`` The organized crime language is still here,'' Reinstein said, but `` the court has ruled that if there were a couple of guys who were involved in a plan to do something -- the court said, well, you know, they're an organization, so that's organized crime.''

That latitude has led Sutter to call for gangs to be treated as organized crime.

Both sides in the district attorney's race agree about some points related to wiretapping: it is expensive and labor intensive, but it is also a powerful tool.

And as technology has evolved over the past two decades, electronic surveillance has changed, too.

`` In the old days with the wiretap, you could go to Radio Shack'' and get the necessary equipment, Walsh said. `` It was easy, it was inexpensive. You could run a wire up. All you had to do was get the warrant.''

But surveillance of a cell phone is `` a quantum leap in terms of resource investment and ability,'' he said.

There is far more technology involved, since a mobile phone call bounces from the phone to a cell tower to a satellite and back again, all of which must be tracked on a laptop computer.

New technology also has given criminals an array of new tactics to help them evade law enforcement, particularly when it comes to cell phones, some of which can be disposed of and all of which can be regularly traded within gangs to evade investigators and warrants.

There is also a great deal of expense involved for both equipment and personnel.

Those are reasons, Walsh said, that his office and other district attorneys' offices do not regularly use wiretaps, although he said they have used other technological tools to track down criminals.

`` The key is: regularly,'' said Chief Pacheco of Raynham. `` The wiretap statute requires that you use all other means necessary before you do a wiretap. It's a tool. It's a very effective tool. It wiped out organized crime.''

Walsh `` is dealing with organized crime down there,'' he continued. `` Those are organizations. ... They're gang-related, which means that there's structure, which means that they're using cell phones.''

As an example of using a wiretap effectively, Pacheco pointed to a recent sting in Coventry, R.I., in which local law enforcement rented the necessary equipment to conduct large-scale surveillance. That investigation resulted in 47 felony arrests.

`` They completely wiped out a drug organization,'' Pacheco said, and he added the same methods could be an asset in Bristol County.

Pacheco agreed with Walsh on the cost involved: `` It's an expensive tool. It costs a lot of money to do the surveillance. And it's -- by law -- a difficult tool to use. But that's because it's so powerful. The courts want to make sure it's regulated.''

But Pacheco still said the district attorney should use it.

`` Neither candidate understands the technology,'' Pacheco added, despite his support for Sutter.

Walsh also criticized Sutter's much-publicized trumpeting of his plan to use more wiretaps if he becomes district attorney.

`` It makes no sense at all to tell criminals how you plan to investigate them,'' he said. `` If you put it in the newspaper, they will be aware of it, so I don't think it makes any sense. Those are not good investigative tactics.''

Sutter, for his part, has said in debates and in the press that he thinks Walsh is the one whose investigative tactics fall short.

State Sen. Stephen Baddour, D-Methuen, vice-chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says the 1968 statute governing wiretaps has become outdated, and he has proposed new legislation to update it.

In a statement, Baddour's office said that the `` court-authorized interception of communications'' is `` one of the most important and effective tools in the investigation of crime by law enforcement agencies.''

Among other things, the senator's proposal would remove the language which restricts surveillance to investigations of organized crime, eliminate the requirement that the targets be notified before the intercepting begins and expand the statute to encompass electronic, in addition to wire and oral communications.

The bill has been filed twice since 2003, but so far it has not been passed by the Legislature. In the meantime, law enforcement officials are left to deal with a law written almost four decades ago, in a very different world of communications.

In a July 7 letter to Sutter from Gary Mello, Walsh's campaign manager, Mello simultaneously mocked wiretaps and refused Sutter's invitation to a debate in Taunton.

`` The Lincoln-Douglas style of debating in town after town has, like the wiretap, been replaced and improved by new methods,'' Mello wrote.

But though much has changed since Lincoln's days, in the end Walsh reversed himself and took part in the Taunton debate.

Wiretaps may, indeed, be as old-fashioned as the Lincoln-Douglas road show -- but like debates, electronic surveillance is here to stay.