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In Black v. United States, 389 F. Supp. 529 (D.C.D.C. 1975), a plaintiff recovered for an invasion of common law and constitutional rights of privacy, through illegal electronic surveillance, which occurred in 1963, eleven years before the subsection was revised to take Bivens and similar cases into account. The court never suggested that an implied exclusion of such claims might exist. It noted that its judgment rested 'on theories of trespass, invasion of privacy by intrusion, invasion of privacy by publication, and violation of Constitutional rights', characterized by the court as 'intentional torts.' 389 F. Supp. at 531.
The straightforward reading of the statute in Black is consistent with the general treatment of intentional torts by federal courts in suits against the government. The principle is well-established that parties may sue under the Act for intentional wrongs. The Supreme Court in Laird v. Nelms, 406 U.S. 797, 92 S. Ct. 1899, 32 L. Ed. 2d 499 (1972), for example, stated that: The legislative history [of the Federal Tort Claims Act] indicates that Congress intended to permit liability essentially based on the intentionally wrongful . . . conduct of Government employees . . . .406 ...
