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Date: Wed, 16 Dec 92 18:50:28 PST
Reply-To: <cocot@osc.versant.com>
Message-ID: <surfpunk-0015@SURFPUNK.Technical.Journal>
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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
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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."
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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.
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Send postings to <surfpunk@osc.versant.com>, subscription requests
to <surfpunk-request@osc.versant.com>. MIME encouraged.
Xanalogical archive access soon. 250 OK.
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