Comment by toyg

> Pretty realistic. Like most of the wire in fact.

The show creator worked for years as a journalist on the crime beat in Baltimore, I expect most of the opsec seen in the series comes from real cases.

> really don't understand why they needed a court order for [wiretapping pagers]

As others said, you need it from a legal perspective rather than a technical one. This is particularly true in the US, where the "fruit of poisonous tree" doctrine is pretty strict: if your evidence was not gathered in the proper manner, it must be discarded and it invalidates any further effort based on it. In specific, wiretapping is illegal even when done by authorities, unless they've been authorized by judges - the relevant US laws were tightened up after it emerged (with Watergate) that president Nixon was eavesdropping on his political rivals.