Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance in America, 1862-1920

Because of the 2013 revelations of Edward Snowden we have all come to understand that, with regard to all ectronic communications, we are mostly all surveilled most of the time. It all started about 150 years ago on the battlefields of America during the Civil War when each side tapped the telegraph lines to spy on the other side. It continued in 1895 when the New York Police Department began to tap telephone lines. It was 20 years before that fact became public knowledge and by then the NYPD was so busy tapping that they had a separate room set aside for that purpose. The practice of tapping really took off in 1910 when the dictograph arrived and made it easier still for people to engage in tappinng. It was the first ready-to-use bug that anyone could employ--that is, buy it off the shelf and use it with no prior training required. Politicians dictographed other politicians; corporations dictographed labor unions; stockbrokers bugged other stockbrokers; and the police dictographed everybody. And we were well on the way to the world that George Orwell envisioned and the world Edward Snowden described. Big Brother had arrived.