Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 18:50:28 PST Reply-To: Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain From: cocot@osc.versant.com (Captain COCOT) To: surfpunk@osc.versant.com (SURFPUNK Technical Journal) Subject: [surfpunk-0015] PRIVACY: Historical Note on Telecom Privacy Keywords: surfpunk, telegrams, wiretapping, cellular eavesdropping ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ Date: Wed, 02 Dec 92 21:31:47 -0800 From: haynes@cats.UCSC.EDU (Jim Haynes) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Historical Note on Telecom Privacy Apropos of all the talk on FBI wiretapping, cellular eavesdropping, etc., I found this passage in "Old Wires and New Waves"; Alvin F. Harlow; 1936. He's writing about unscrupulous telegraph operators in the early days. They would use information in telegrams for personal gain, or delay messages or news for personal gain, or sell news reports to non-subscribers of the press association. "Pennsylvania passed a law in 1851, making telegrams secret, to prevent betrayal of private affairs by operators. When, therefore, an operator was called into court in Philadelphia a little later, and ordered to produce certain telegrams which would prove an act of fraud, he refused to do so, saying that the state law forbade it. The circuit court, shocked at this development, proceeded to override the law, saying: It must be apparent that, if we adopt this construction of the law, the telegraph may be used with the most absolute security for purposes destructive to the well-being of society - a state of things rendering its absolute usefulness at least questionable. The correspondence of the traitor, the murderer, the robber and the swindler, by means of which their crimes and frauds could be the more readily accomplished and their detection and punishment avoided, would become things so sacred that they never could be accessible to the public justice, however deep might be the public interest involved in their production. The judge therefore ordered the operator to produce the telegrams." ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________ The SURFPUNK Technical Journal is a dangerous multinational hacker zine originating near BARRNET in the fashionable western arm of the northern California matrix. Quantum Californians appear in one of two states, spin surf or spin punk. Undetected, we are both, or might be neither. ________________________________________________________________________ Send postings to , subscription requests to . MIME encouraged. Xanalogical archive access soon. 250 OK. ________________________________________________________________________ ________________________________________________________________________