Did you know, "that five and six centuries ago, English citizens had, in impressive numbers, been arrested for eavesdropping."
Want to know more?
Eavesdropping: An Intimate History
, by John Locke, is going to be released June 25th. (ISBN 13: 9780199236138)
, by John Locke, is going to be released June 25th. (ISBN 13: 9780199236138) The author writes...
"I wondered what, in the medieval mind, would have caused this behavior to be criminalized, and what the “criminals” themselves were doing, or thought they were doing, when they went out at night and listened to their neighbors’ conversations......until I began to study eavesdropping... I had never, in many years of research, encountered a behavior whose actual significance was so greatly at variance with its recognized importance. Look for books on social behavior with the word “eavesdropping” in the index section and you are likely to be severely disappointed. Enter the same word in computerized literature searches and your screen will display a list of books on wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance. But the word was coined centuries before telephones and recording equipment were invented, and the practice of eavesdropping documented nearly a thousand years earlier, when people were happy to entrust to unaided senses the question of who was doing what to whom." (more) (review)
Fascinating.
