Eavesdropping

Eavesdropping is the act of surreptitiously listening to a private conversation. This is commonly thought to be unethical and there is an old adage that eavesdroppers seldom hear anything good of themselves.

History

Ancient Anglo-Saxon law punished eavesdroppers, who skulked in the eavesdrip of another's home, with a fine; the eavesdrip was also sometimes called the eavesdrop. Eavesdrop also means a small low visibility hole near the entrance to a building (generally under the eaves) which would allow the occupants to listen in on the conversation of people awaiting admission to the house. Typically this would allow the occupant to be prepared for unfriendly visitors.

Early telephone systems shared party lines which would allow the sharing subscribers to listen to each others conversations. This was a common practise in rural America which resulted in many incidents and feuds.

Techniques

Eavesdropping can also be done over telephone lines (wiretapping), email, instant messaging, and other methods of communication considered private. (If a message is publicly broadcast, witnessing it does not count as eavesdropping.)

In ancient China, it is said that to prevent eavesdropping when discussing important matters, soldiers would instead draw the characters on hands or papers. This is where the superstition of the "black dot" on a piece of paper comes from.

Eavesdropping in fiction

Eavesdropping is something of a clichéd plot device in fiction, allowing the hero or villain to gain vital information not easily obtainable by other means by deliberately or accidentally overhearing a conversation. For instance, in "Letting In the Jungle" by Rudyard Kipling, Mowgli overhears the hunter Buldeo telling some men that Mowgli's adopted mother Messua is about to be executed, so Mowgli sets about rescuing her.

See also

• Computer surveillance
• ECHELON
• Espionage
• Magic (cryptography)
• Man-in-the-middle attack
• Katz v. United States (1967)
• NSA warrantless surveillance controversy (December 2005-2006)
• Opportunistic encryption
• Privacy
• Secure communication
• Surveillance
• Telephone tapping
• Fiber tapping
• Ultra
• Keystroke logging

References