Crackberries beware. If your phone is being wiretapped by the feds, or at the state level in California, Arizona and Illinois, to name a few places, your text messages are being read as well.

Chicago Police will start intercepting text messages during their investigations now that Gov. Blagojevich has signed a bill expanding state-authorized wiretaps beyond "oral communication."

Lt. John Rowton of the Chicago Police Narcotics and Gang Investigation Section said the department will dismantle computer software that blocks text messages that are retrieved during state-authorized wiretaps of phones. The feds already have the capability to intercept text messages, but Illinois law had lagged behind other states such as California and Arizona, Rowton said.

"This is a great tool," Rowton said of the new law. "We have done wiretaps where you get a text message at a crucial time and are in the dark. You don't know what you are missing."

This is just another step down the road of intruding on our private conversations in the name of fighting crime. With a wiretap, the listening agents are required to minimize (stop listening) to the call once they determine it is not pertinent to the matter they are investigating. How do they do that with a text message?