604
Opinion of the Court
It was not intended to limit the offense to cases where the interception based upon the application or authorization was factually possible, but to recognize the fact that at the time the prohibited notice was given it very likely could not be known whether or not there would be an interception.
The Court of Appeals thought its result justified by its view that the aim of the statute was to prevent interference with "possible" interceptions, and that if an interception was not possible because the wiretap was no longer in place at the time of the disclosure, that interest was not threatened. But the statute is aimed at something more than the interference with interceptions; it is aimed at disclosure of wiretap orders or applications which may lead to interceptions. The offense is complete at the time the notice is given, when it often cannot be known whether any interception will take place.
Justice Stevens argues that § 2232(c) criminalizes disclosures of pending applications without a need to rely on the word " 'possible.' " Post, at 608. That is not so. The reference to pending applications occurs only in the clause specifying the knowledge element. The actus reus element must be independently satisfied. Without the word "possible," the statute would only prohibit giving notice of "the interception": It would not reach the giving of notice of an application which has not yet resulted in an authorization or an authorization which has not yet resulted in an interception. That Congress could have accomplished the same result by phrasing the statute differently—for instance, by repeating " 'such interception' " in the third clause, ibid.—does not undercut the fact that the word "possible" is necessary in the statute as written to criminalize such behavior.3
3 Justice Stevens also argues that our reading of the statute would achieve no temporal limitation on liability and could result in the "absurd" prosecution of a discloser 10 years after the wiretap expired. Post, at 608-609. Although we reserve the question for a case that presents it, we note that the wiretapping scheme as a whole suggests that a plausible
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