I was watching E! True Hollywood Story: The Sopranos the other day and the show featured FBI audio surveillance tapes of a mafia “social club” with various suspects discussing The Sopranos. Would the FBI tapes have to have been leaked for them to be used for such trivial purposes?
Working with Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg, I know that Government documents are not protected under copyright. They are produced with taxpayer money, and any person is able to copy and reproduce them. (Though the government can use national security, ongoing criminal investigation, etc. to restrict access to certain documents.)
Perhaps the same rules apply to government-produced audio tapes? Once the criminal investigation is no longer active, maybe these are like any other government/taxpayer produced documents, and are available to the citizens to use?