This book tells the story of government-sponsored wiretapping in
Britain and the United States from the rise of telephony in the
1870s until the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It pays particular
attention to the 1990s, which marked one of the most dramatic turns
in the history of telecommunications interception. During that
time, fiber optic and satellite networks rapidly replaced the
copper-based analogue telephone system that had remained virtually
unchanged since the 1870s. That remarkable technological advance
facilitated the rise of the networked home computer, cellular
telephony, and the Internet, and users hailed the dawn of the
digital information age. However, security agencies such as the FBI
and MI5 were concerned. Since the emergence of telegraphy in the
1830s, security services could intercept private messages using
wiretaps, and this was facilitated by some of the world's largest
telecommunications monopolies such as AT&T in the US and
British Telecom in the UK. The new, digital networks were
incompatible with traditional wiretap technology. To make things
more complicated for the security services, these monopolies had
been privatized and broken up into smaller companies during the
1980s, and in the new deregulated landscape the agencies had to
seek assistance from thousands of startup companies that were often
unwilling to help. So for the first time in history, technological
and institutional changes posed a threat to the security services'
wiretapping activities, and government officials in Washington and
London acted quickly to protect their ability to spy, they sought
to force the industry to change the very architecture of the
digital telecommunications network. This book describes in detail
the tense negotiations between governments, the telecommunications
industry, and civil liberties groups during an unprecedented moment
in history when the above security agencies were unable to wiretap.
It reveals for the first time the thoughts of some of the
protagonists in these crucial negotiations, and explains why their
outcome may have forever altered the trajectory of our information
society.
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