Does the Communications Privacy Act bar a private detective from recording evidence in a criminal case?

A similar conclusion was reached in United States v. Phillips (8th Cir.1976) 540 F.2d 319, cert. denied (1976) 429 U.S. 1000, 97 S.Ct. 530, 50 L.Ed.2d 611. There, as in Vest, the defendant was accused of perjury based on certain false statements before a grand jury. The critical evidence at trial was a conversation between defendant and two compatriots recorded by a private detective. In resolving the issue of admissibility, the court rejected the government's threshold claim that the Act did not apply where the government was merely the innocent recipient of a privately recorded conversation. As the court stated: "We also reject the government's argument ... that the tape is independently admissible because the government had no part in the decision to record or the actual recording of the conversation.... [T]he fourth and fifth amendments proscribe government action, not private action. We are concerned here with a specific statutory directive that certain conversations which are electronically intercepted by private persons are not admissible in any official proceeding." (Id. at p. 327, fn. 5, italics added.)