An Attack on Privacy
The Eavesdroppers.
by Samuel Dash, Robert E. Knowlton and Richard F. Schwartz.
Rutgers. 484 p. $6.50.
The initially striking and ultimately perhaps the most appalling characteristic of the world of 1984 was that it lacked privacy altogether. The book was an unpleasant shock to most of us: it all happened a bit too close to home. But The Eavesdroppers goes one step further and informs us that in some ways Orwell’s fictitious world is already in existence. It seems certain, for example, that the anonymity of life in the city which used to be one of the great urban charms has now gone forever. The kinds of surveillance, of citizens by the guardians, which Orwell described, which because of their range and apparent inevitability make up the horror of that fictitious world of his, have been on our actual market for some time, and therefore in use, whether legally or not. They include wire-tapping, closed-circuit television, high-powered telescopes, two-way mirrors, and concealed microphones (“bugs”). The authors of this survey have painstakingly investigated the true story of these devices in the face of the sometime evasion, denial, and lies of nearly all those who use them. Each tackles a section in turn. Samuel Dash, who directed the investigation, first tells of eavesdropping practice—as soon becomes apparent, eavesdropping is far too whimsical a word. In the second, Richard Schwartz gives the technical background, and in the third, Robert Knowlton explains the legal situation.
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Two points stand out. The first is the extent to which the police employ eavesdropping equipment in the different states of the union to which the investigators went. In some, evidence so obtained is admissible in courts of law. In some, it is not, or is only so under special circumstances. In either case their use is concealed from the public as far as possible. The policemen’s argument goes like this: what you, the citizen, don’t know we know, won’t hurt you (unless, as sometimes happens, you get blackmailed). The extension to the argument runs: what you don’t know we know may even do you a power of good, because if you knew we knew, you would raise a shout at the loss of your privacy, a hitherto inalienable right: and then the bookies and racketeers and call girls who rely on the telephone would be able to object to the use of taps.
It is true that both state and federal law on the subject is confused, owing partly to the comparative newness of electronic devices, partly to their universal use whatever the law, and partly to the spy scare. Federal law bans tapping: certain states allow it by court order: hence the federal law is not enforced. No one in government, especially no one who has to produce results for electors, is anxious to rob the law-enforcement officer of a useful extension of his power. How useful that power is and how easy to wield we can see from the examples of employers who bug their rest-rooms to find out whether their men are disloyal or fraudulent, restaurateurs who bug their tables to hear if the customers like the food, and private detectives who openly advertise that they have the latest in electrical eavesdropping equipment. At the same time, it is clear that these examples represent a fairly idle kind of activity. Eavesdropping by police is far more sinister. The health of a society depends, after all, not on the relations between police and criminals but on that between police and public. When police install taps or bugs, they are in effect laying traps, and taking over some of the functions of a secret, or political, police. When they go so far as to break and enter in order to plant a bug or when they bug a conversation between a suspect and his lawyer in a prison cell or when they have to rely on eavesdropping informers, as is generally necessary in tapping cases, the health of the society is obviously jeopardized. The convictions chalked up to the credit of law and order are gratifying to the district attorney, but unfortunately the penalty will always fetch up first of all at police morality itself. It is the old question of power and corruption.
These are perhaps naïve-sounding observations in view of the stunning amount of evidence collected here on the clandestine and illegal lengths to which law-enforcement officers and even legislators go in order to do their duty. With the decline of liberalism in the West has come a decline in respect for the sovereignty of reason. It is a legacy of the totalitarianism and the fears of war. No personal principle, it seems, is worth holding up against the will to win. Even though law-enforcement officers exercise great pressure on the legislators and have until now prevented their passing strict laws on electronic eavesdropping and prescribing strong deterrents, we must devoutly hope that public opinion, now that it can be informed by The Eavesdroppers, will demand that the police respect the integrity of the people. Without the help of public opinion it would be impossible to prevent a police chief from installing taps in excess of the small number recommended by the Savarese Committee, which, it will be remembered, conducted a special study into the illegal interception of communications in New York. The Savarese Committee thought this small number of taps should be worked through leased lines connected through the telephone exchange and strictly supervised by the court. But tapping wires and planting concealed microphones is terribly easy. The licensing of gambling and even of prostitution would do more to bring police problems within bounds, but probably it is too much to suppose that the gap between the morality represented by legislation and actual private morality, widening as it seems to be, should ever close.
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The other striking point about this book, and one which argues strongly against the tacit condoning of eavesdropping which is so much to be feared, is that it should have been written at all, let alone with the backing of a grant from the Fund for the Republic, under the sponsorship of the Pennsylvania Bar Association Endowment. In Britain there tends to be a general hopefulness about the way officials behave, blemishes on the record being often blandly excused, because the British tend to believe that the British act from the highest motives. It is a habit of mind not unfairly called hypocritical, though, paradoxically, it may still be perfectly honest. Only America, one feels, could produce a book of this sort: that Samuel Dash could write such an indictment, often from the evidence of the same people who at first maintained that wire-tapping and bugging were unknown to them, argues toughness and independence of character on both sides that an outsider can only wonder at, and admire. Eavesdropping is always called “a dirty business” and yet “necessary,” as if it were a war weapon. For it to flourish as it does, and yet for it to be completely exposed in its whole dreadfulness, in and by one and the same society, is evidence of a tremendous social strength, with strange roots in conflict, anomaly, and perhaps even anarchy itself.
It is extremely disappointing that such a notable and important book should be presented in a charmless and unreadable fashion. The technical section is admirably clear and that is all that is required of it, but the legal section is a solemn example of jargon. Dash’s own writing, on the practice of eavesdropping, seems weighed down by the mass of his material. It is hard to understand why he did not use a straightforward narrative of the investigation or else a plain judicial style of exposition. As it is, his section falls awkwardly between a loose and repetitious collection of data and a really detached and scholarly history. As it is equipped with neither a proper acknowledgment of the common reader nor any sort of an address to him, whatever pleasantness occurs in the telling tends to be inconsequential. However, irritation alone should not stop readers from learning the true and remarkably full story of how nearly their liberties are threatened, and some will even be glad that there has been no stooping to the persuasion of good writing.
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