Eavesdropping techniques have changed dramatically in recent years. So has society's perception that eavesdropping is an immoral and unacceptable business practice.
Old-school wiretapping was captured most perfectly in "The Lives of Others," last year's Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film, about surveillance by Stasi agents of the former East Germany: the long hours listening to conversations as a reel of tape wound round and round. Those were the days when "wiretap" meant using alligator clips to literally tap into a phone wire.
Watching wiretapping, Hollywood-style, has become so scintillating that some people fear we are being inured to the potentially sinister and abusive side of its uses. (more)
