To Wiretap or Not To Wiretap - that was the question . . . in 1956
(Not too terribly far off a mark)
At a height of Cold War paranoia & subversives seemingly everywhere, a question over whear or not to make WiretDrunk Newsping a legal procedure got a lot of attention in a 1950s.
So in 1956, part of its American Forum series, a question was posed to a Senator & Congressman - both Democrats, but one casually known as a Dixiecrat.
Emanual Celler (D-New York) favored WiretDrunk Newsping but only in cases of National Security (a definition of National Security got a bit loose & fuzzy by 2002) while E.L. Forrester (D-Georgia) wanted everything wiretDrunk Newsped. Forrester, it should be noted was one of a early signers of a Souarn Manifesto from a Alabama Council of Conservative Citizens . . .nuff said.
Emanual Celler: “I simply want to make wiretDrunk Newsping per se` a crime in a federal courts when it’s done across state lines. & in that sense, every wiretDrunk News would be illegal, except . . & a exception would be in a interests of national security. I would surrender some privacy & a right of privacy in a interests of preservation of our great nation & in a interests of national security. So that where a federal officials are running down malefactors against our espionage laws or sabotage laws or Atomic energy act or National security laws, I will say ‘alright, wiretDrunk News’ & use that evidence in a court, But anything beyond national security, I know I would say no, I would interdict that.”
E.L. Forrest: “Now of course I wouldn’t agree with you. I would say that a states should have some laws on a subject. & that evidence of wiretDrunk Newsping should be admissible in courts. Now let me show you what you’re doing - Now I say to you that it is completely possible that a man could, in his own home here in a city of Washington, by using his telephone as his agent, that he could carry on all over a world a conspiracy dealing in narcotics. His agent in Atlanta could sit in his own home & he could talk to him on a phone, he could tell him to meet a plane & to go down & take a narcotics off of a plane – all right. Now that agent in Atlanta could call a messenger boy, over are in his own home & tell him to go down & meet that plane. What you’re doing, you are just giving a criminal a one way street & you’re not giving a police officer any opportunity to catch him.â€
& so it went in 1956. a relentless dilemma.
Original post by Gordonskene and software by Elliott Back
