Electronic Communication Interception Technologies and Issues of Power
by Daniel Ventre, Philippe Guillot
1History and Repertoire of Communication Interception Practices
The interception of correspondence has been ongoing for centuries. However, we will not attempt to date its origin. By focusing on the period closest to the present, it is possible to identify its multiple contexts of use, as well as its civil, military, political, economic and diplomatic applications. On the one hand, the emergence of new modes of communication in the 19th century led to a considerable increase in the volume and distribution speed of correspondence, and to changes in the geographical dimension, on the other hand. It became much easier to correspond with the other side of the world, thanks to the speed of messages reaching their destination and the reduction in communication costs. Communication also diversified its methods: there was a gradual shift from writing to voice transmission with telephony and radio communications.
The principle of the optical telegraph, then called the aerial telegraph so as to differentiate it from the electric telegraph, has been known since antiquity. As early as the second century BC, the Greek general, statesman and historian Polybius described, in Book X, Chapter VII “Fire Signals” of his General History, a system “by means of which anyone who cares to do so even though he is at a distance of three, four, or even more days’ journey, can be informed”1. He describes the process in the following terms:
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