By Rhiannon Davies

Published: Friday, 08 April 2022 at 12:00 am


Wiretapping has a chequered past in the United States, from civil war soldiers who were seen as heroes for tapping enemy wires to the political scandals that rocked the 20th-century establishment. Brian Hochman, the author of The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States tells Rhiannon Davies about the history of electronic eavesdropping.

Brian Hochman is the author of The Listeners: A History of Wiretapping in the United States (Harvard University Press, 2022)