They're Watching

Around 100 years ago someone invaded your privacy to protect you - and they never left.

- Arnab Mukherjee

It isn’t a coincidence that the kind of knowledge a character is known to possess is not entirely obtained in a consensual manner. Surveillance has been around for a long time. It has been used as a method to control the law breakers and the rebels. While early surveillance involved interception of letters and couriers, eavesdropping mechanisms through architectural modifications in buildings and more, what we are going to trace here is the evolution of surveillance since the advent of electronic communication.

Wiretapping

One can trace the origins of audio-visual surveillance back to the days of the telegraph, a technology that boosted communication manifold. It was during the days of the Civil War in the United States of America that both sides would tap into the other side’s telegraph lines to intercept communications. This was a fairly achievable task due to the lack of security measures as well as the slow speed of communication over the telegraph. But all of that changed with the popularity of the telephone towards the last couple of decades of the 19th century.