The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States—Bruce Hochman (Cambridge, MA, USA: Harvard Univ. Press, 2022, 366 pp.)

Abstract

It is 1864. Union and Confederate soldiers, often less than 300 yards apart, are tapping the copper telegraph lines of their opposition. Soon, disinformation campaigns and coded keying were developed. So begins the history of wiretapping in The Listeners, by Bruce Hochman, professor of English and director of American studies at Georgetown University. His 282 pages of text and 56 pages of scholarly notes brings us into the early 1990s when the explosion of fiber optics, spy satellites, pen registers that recorded all numbers dialed from a given phone, and internet data mining all supplemented, but never replaced, the “Wire Tap.” The breadth and intensity of the conflict over wiretapping is documented in this volume through detailed examinations of major Supreme Court decisions, which now are resulting in the near completion of the U.S. Surveillance State.