and policy issues that impact you. saturday morning, we look at president biden's student loan forgiveness plan. we feature cohosts of the podcast the stay in esoteric political history. watch washington journal live at 7:00 eastern saturday morning on c-span or on c-span now. join the conversation with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages and tweets. >> georgetown university's brian t

american ever jailed for tapping a wire and this was the year 1864. he was imprisoned or convicted under a statute written in the state of california, which means that the practice of wiretapping and laws against it, prohibitions against accommodate back all the way to the age of the telegraph, of the civil war. when i discovered this story

eight years ago, i was stunned. i did not know wiretapping went back that far. the book i have written traces that history back to the age of the telegraph up until our own digital age today. americans tend to use the term wiretapping promiscuously, we use it for all electronic surveillance from the amazon alexa passively listening to your ambient noise, and being conversations in your home, to the n.s.a.'s data valence schemes. since 9/11. this is not exactly an issue with the practice of wiretapping which strictly speaking refers to the interception of messages,

conversations carried by wire live from a sender to a receiver. it is a practice that dates back to the 19th century. when wiretap is like williams would literally tap into the telegraph network and overhear morse code as it clicked away. that is how telephone typing worked starting in the late 19th century early 20th-century and really until the 1980's is what we are talking about. host: technologically, so we stay on the same page, the difference between wiretapping, bugging, and eavesdropping. guest: these are confusing distinctions. they are confusing for a variety of reasons. the law was confused on these distinctions for 100 years which is interesting. wiretapping is listening to a

phone exchange. bugging is the practice of hidden microphones to listen in on private conversations. this also dates back to the 19th century. and this really picks up after world war ii. host: what about youths dropping? guest: historical records are hazy on this but it refers to the practice of literally listening under the eaves of someone else's home where the raindrops from the roof to the ground. prohibitions against eavesdropping date back to the 15th century, 16th-century in the united kingdom but it is not

until of course the 19th century in the united states when it comes under the guise of american law. host: a history of wiretapping in the united states, that is our conversation in the final hour of the "washington journal." brian hochman is our guest, the author of the book the listeners: a history of wiretapping in the united states." i came out earlier this spring. here to take your phone call, the phone lines we had last segment regionally is if you are the eastern or central time zones, @cspanwj -- (202) 748-8000. if you are mountain and pacific time zones, (202) 748-8001 is the number to join the conversation. we take those until 10:00 a.m. eastern. page five of your book, you write that wiretapping was once a dirty business as the supreme court justice family characterized it -- famously characterized it years ago. now it is a tactic indispensable of the direction -- detection of

crime and essential to the protection of national security. how did we get from there to here? how do you answer that question? guest: it takes a whole book to explain it. this is the central story the book tells, how it is wiretapping goes from a tactic associated with criminals, conmen, dirty, unethical characters to unacceptable, legally acceptable if it not controversial tactic used in the protection of crime -- protection of national security and detection of crime. the transition from dirty business to acceptable investigative tactics is the rise of punitive law and order politics in the 1960's. which essentially normalized the practice of wiretapping in america. it took about 100 years for the government to establish its wiretap authority and it is only in the wake of the civil rights

uprising of 1966-1967 that the government is able to find -- to finally get in on the act legally speaking, though they have been doing it for much longer. that i think tells us a number of important things about the history of surveillance in this country. it is not necessarily a kind of knee-jerk response as we might think to anti-communists, cold war anti-communism, or today antiterrorism priorities. instead a gradual accommodation to much more subtle and problematic set of law enforcement imperatives. i believe -- imperatives that i believe are critical to the rise of our society. host: going back to dirty business. we talked about d.c. williams, the first person convicted of wiretapping.

but wiretapping is a tactic used in the civil war for military purposes, something federal troops and confederate troops both participated in. why was it considered a dirty business in the beginning? guest: wiretapping begins in the military. the civil war was the first conflict in world history in which the use of electronic communications proves instrumental on the battlefield and both sides, the union and confederacy, developed wiretapping techniques to listen in on the enemys' -- enemy's conversations so to speak. the tactic of wiretapping receives national news conference throughout the conflict and indeed to both in the united states and across the atlantic as i discovered. quickly after the war, it falls into disrepute. as a result of characters like d.c. williams. the government and law

enforcement had little interest or need to tap telegram lines in the 19th century simply because most telegraph companies kept copies of every message on file for six months or up to a year that were accessible to subpoena. it is a lot easier to file through a telegraph company's filing cabinet then it is to sit on the line and listen to morse code. that meanings of wiretapping grows up in the 19th century as the nations depended on electronic munication's grows, at the hands of criminals and conmen. there is a real powerful association in this period and until the 1920's and 1930's between wiretapping and the criminal element. this is why setting aside long-standing concerns about privacy rights, this is why law

enforcement has such trouble establishing its wiretap authority in the early decades of the 20th century. host: what happened in the 1920's and 1930's, we are talking gangsta era, eliot ness? guest: prohibition era, wiretapping, this is where the rubber meets the road. in history, it is when law enforcement in earnest gets in on the act. the date we can point to as a landmark of the history is 1928 when the supreme court hands down a landmark decision and fourth amendment jurisprudence notice -- known as homestead versus the united states according to the fourth and for the amendments making a constitutional. this gives the prohibition vero and law enforcement generally to give the green light to wiretap in the open. though they have been performing wiretaps and conducting electronic surveillance operations for decades under the radar.

as a result of the gray areas in the law. it is really the prohibition experiment that brings wiretapping into the mainstream domain of law enforcement. even then, it takes another four decades from 1928 in 1968 for the government -- to 1960 if the government to establish its wiretap authority and establish the wiretap oversight that is still very much in place today. host: a history of wiretapping in the united states, the subtitle of the book the listeners, brian hochman is the author. let me pause and bring in colors on the topic. anthony miller, new york, good morning. you are on with the professor. caller: thank you for joining us and thank you to the moderator as well, perhaps both of you can answer my question if not today on some future segments c-span might air. it has troubled me greatly ever

since barack obama came to office. he was able to wipe clean a lawsuit that had been pending i believe it was heptig versus at&t in the usa. the thought police have been a well oiled machine in this governmental apparatus since the beginning of time and have only perfected it. when you consider the fact that the whistleblower who came forward and exposed what the nsa had been doing by illegally wiretapping, they set up a big brother machine is what they refer to it as whereby they were allowed to go through everybody's -- everything you do, every keystroke, every phone conversation. it is hard for us as regular people to know exactly how sophisticated the technologies have evolved. barack obama's first signing statement as president was to dismantle the lawsuit. this was a standing lawsuit

against a criminal act against the constitution yet it was wiped clean by a single stroke of a presidential pen. i wonder, was that legal? i do not believe it was. when you weigh that into the cambridge analytica scandal, what is going on with spying on our own presidents, you had general milley calling a chinese general telling him don't worry, you mailed this virus but you -- whatever. it seems to me is this not tierney? host: let me pause there and get the professor to chat about that. i don't know if you know about that case but the nsa in general. guest: i'm not familiar with the specific case the caller refers to about this charge the caller is making of wiretapping and electronic surveillance as a form of ty rennie --

tyranny, this was monts -- was once mainstreamed. this is a position against electronic surveillance conducted by a private citizen or the government that animated both the right and left for about a century. we live in different political age and those systems have been pushed to the margins. the caller is also referring to i believe at&t's listening room, room 606 or 612 in the fulton street at&t switching station in san francisco. this was discovered in i believe 2006-2007 as a result of a whistleblower that exposed at&t's practice of enabling the

government, the nsa, and other agencies, to listen to private conversations through backdoor channels in the internet and telecommunications infrastructures. this too has a long history as well, as early as 1895. the new york telephone company is leasing lines to the new york police department, the nypd. so the relationship between telecommunications, companies, tele-communications industry more generally, and law enforcement imperative, this is long in the making. i do not think we can see the last 10 to 15 years of history accurately unless we see the 100 years-120 years that preceded it. host: a quote from your book that jumped out, "the american ideal of electronic privacy has never existed in practice." guest: so this is a provocation.

i mean two things when i say privacy has never existed in practice when we think about communications privacy. the first is that wiretapping and electronic surveillance, historically speaking, technologically speaking, have been historically coextensive with the rise of electronic communications. there is no such thing as electronic comedic case and without electronic eavesdropping . so what it is we mean when we talk about electronic privacy is somewhat fraught i would say as a result. but that is a somewhat grim story and the other side of the same coin and the second thing i refer to when i say the privacy you never existed in practice is that privacy has animated

political constituencies to work successfully against the intrusions of government and technology for about 150 years. and when i say the privacy has never existed in practice, i'm also trying to capture something of this lost sense political commitment that animated so much of american political culture until the 1960's. and it dissipates after the triumph of the law & order coalition in the late 1960's. host: head up to michigan, this is alan waiting, good morning. caller: good morning. as far as this patriot act, if you go back in time now, cole got blown up and they spent a lot of time there. we had our pants down. we do not -- did not do anything about it. two years later, you get the patriot act.

that is a heck of a name. i held a top secret compartmentalized work with admirals, navy. so the world or talking about, though i was 4-0, perfect for us, i don't have respect for it in the civilian world. i have zero respect. let's go to the warrants. wasn't papadopoulos and carter spying on? they were spied on. trump -- about ruining trump in every way they can, hasn't he been the most scrutinized, spied on men in the history of maine? host: a couple questions there. guest: i think that that history has yet to be written. i think we will know more as

time unfolds. there is a lot in that comment. i think one response to offer that might -- my immediate response is to suggest the story of wiretapping in america is not simply a story about government spooks spying on politicians, private citizens. it is a more prosaic story, more mundane story. one of the things i was shocked to discover in researching this book was just how prolific wiretapping was in the private sector up until the 1960's-19 70's in the united states. far more lines were tapped in jurisdictions like new york in the 1950's to litigate civil

disputes and divorce cases than there were two spy on communist subversives or even bring down the mafia and the like. there is a tangled history behind that reality, behind the numbers, but i think it suggests the story of wiretapping goes in directions i think popular understanding and popular memory today might not necessarily expect, might not necessarily be familiar with, and part of the work of my book is uncover that story, which i believe is a truer story in the sense of historical record and in the sense of how earlier generations of american understood the problem and litigated against it. host: what put you on the path of writing the book? guest: i came to the project

very much by accident. i stumbled upon the story of d.c. williams, buried in the columns of a 19th-century newspaper and was shocked to discover wiretapping went back so far. i'm a historian of technology, a cultural historian of the united states, and i should have known better. i wanted to understand one, the reality of the history, how far it goes back, and life it is that as an educated american, i would think of wiretapping and electronic surveillance more generally as more modern, more contemporary phenomenon. without doing much digging, i discovered it was not a subject that had received much historical treatment. there is a lot of work that has been done in legal scholarship surrounding the history of the fourth amendment, surrounding

fourth amendment law, electronic surveillance law, wiretap law, but outside of the domain of law , in the domain of policy and culture and technology, that story has not been told. i had to be the one to tell it. host: sticking to the domain of culture, how is wiretapping and bugging and eavesdropping portrayed in media specifically cinema in the decades? guest: this was a very important story for me to follow. contrary to our understanding of electronic surveillance, particularly government surveillance, with the capitol building, contrary to the image of wiretapping as the province merely of a shadowy surveillance state that goes on behind closed doors in the realm of shadowy

government secrets, wiretapping has been a perennial point of cultural fascination dating back to the 19th century. one of the cultural documents i was thrilled to uncover as i was working through the sources was a kind of state of halt novels, tremendously popular thrillers produced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries cold wire thrillers. these were detective novels that followed the exploits of wire tappers, telegraph tappers, on both sides of the law. almost always in the genre of the wire thriller, wiretapping was depicted as a dirty, disreputable even dishonorable activity and i 12 -- i wanted to

recover some of the by recovering sources. fast forward a century to hbo's celebrated series the wire where wiretapping is mostly depicted as the good way to wage the war on drugs, not always effective but certainly better than knocking heads on street corners . i find those two historical touchstones illuminating. wiretapping at the turn of the 20th century as dirty, dishonorable, disreputable, and wiretapping at the 21st as something that good police do. how it is that transition takes place is much of the story the book tells. host: a scene from the wire tappers, an illustration from the 1906 with the quote quiet, motionless waiting over the

sounder, the protagonist listening to a telegraph tap, that is the picture from the novel. we are talking with guest: who wrote "the listeners: a history of wiretapping in the united states ." it is just after 9:30 on the east coast. at 10 a cocky and eastern, we will end this program. the house is expected to have a brief pro forma session this morning so that is where we may be going if they are in at that time. go ahead and keep calling in on lines split regionally, (202) 748-8000 in the eastern or central time zone, (202) 748-8001 if you are in the mountain or pacific time zone. this is shown in the mountain time zone, colorado. good morning. caller: good morning. i have a question for the gentleman. i guess he did not answer from the last person. when obama and others spy on a presidential campaign and then biden can write a presidential house, now we have another

coming out to say the fbi is involved in telling him bury the biden story. isn't this corruption? all these departments in the building behind you need to be shut down. this is absolute corruption. host: that is shown in colorado. the intersection of presidents and wiretapping in history there. guest: i unfortunately cannot speak to these questions with any kind of authority. my book is the history. it stops generally speaking in 2001 and of course it came out before these recent revelations. what i can say and what we know for now is that wiretapping, one conducted by the federal government or by municipal or state law enforcement, is conducted under a rigorous set

of judicial safeguards. so i think we will find out more about how that kind of current controversy came to be. but generally speaking, when wires are tapped, they are done above board and the system the federal government put in place in 1968 with the passage of the omnibus streets act, title iii of that law is the federal wiretap app. -- cap act. 1973, the foreign surveillance intelligence act, these are pre-much followed to the letter of the law. for better or for worse. host: how would that history be different if it was looking at other countries around the world? guest: that is a really great question.

i invite other scholars and historians -- there is only so many wiretaps one can follow. the american story looks different from obviously the story of wiretapping and electronic surveillance in totalitarian governments, you know, countries like russia in the age of the soviet union, east germany in the age of the soviet union, or even latin america under military dictatorships. those are very different stories from the american story. also, more democratic nations who have similar communications infrastructures and similar legal regimes, the united kingdom or canada, their story looks different from ours for a of reasons. the first reason why the american story looks different

is because it happened here first. the techniques of technical surveillance that would become wiretapping and bugging were pioneered in the united states context. secondly, there is a far more robust i think tradition of civil liberties and civil rights activism in the united states that has shaped the history that i've traced, and it is one reason why it took so long to pass a federal wiretap law in the united states in 1968. it took one century, whereas in canada, it took a couple years and in the united kingdom it took less. it is because most americans did not like wiretapping. they believed it was a dirty business. and that political consensus won

the day for the better part of the century. it is one reason why our story is different from the story of other nations because ordinary americans pushed back. host: south carolina, this is audrey, good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to ask a question if i may please. host: go ahead. caller: did we have wiretapping during the civil rights era, and how did that come about and what did you learn from it? thank you. i will listen for my answer. guest: thanks for the question. this is an important story the book follows. the caller is referring to the fbi's surveillance activities in the 1950's and 1960's, in particular harassing and surveilling civil rights leaders. martin luther king most

especially but also elijah mohammed, malcolm x, sophie carmichael, and others. this is an important story the book follows but also i want to follow another story that is happening alongside it, which is how the triumph of a law and order style of politics -- which is essentially a racialized politics -- wins out in the 1960's as a result of civil rights revolution. essentially it empowers law enforcement to wiretap a far less visible sector of the american public. that is communities of color, on the front lines of what would be

known as the war on drugs. while the book traces that history of save mart luther king and it also traces the history of the martin luther king recordings, which have remained under seal since the 1970's, it also traces how wiretapping becomes normalized in the workings of american law enforcement in the war on drugs. upwards of 80% to 90% of wires that are tapped in this country in any given year are done for that specific purpose, to wage the war on drugs. communities of color are at the frontlines of their conflict. host: why are there martin luther king taps under seal? guest: this is a crazy story. the story of martin luther king being bugged by f.b.i. is well-known to end it was in fact well known during his own life and was a part of the public

record shortly following his death. he recordings themselves were put under seal as a result of the church committee investigation of the federal intelligence community in the 1970's. and have remained under seal ever since. politicians on the right have attempted to unseal those recordings over time, mostly in efforts to tarnish his legacy, tarnishes name, most famously in the run-up to congress's passage of martin luther king as a holiday. a senator from north carolina tried to unseal those documents. he was rebuffed. generations of politicians and historians have tried to get at their contents through creative

means. they will be unsealed in 2027 and we will have to see what happens then. host: heading to dearborn, michigan, good morning, you are next. jeff, are you with us, sir? caller: what a stingray listening device is and what dirt boxing is. host: we can take those up. a stingray listening device. guest: i don't know what a dirt box is. a stingray is essentially a fake cell phone tower. it is also known as an imfia catcher and this was a device developed on the private market in the 1980's and 1990's and has become a favored tool of law

enforcement in the 21st century. the use of the stingray has grown up in the gray areas of the law for quite some time. it is unclear whether it is legal to use a stingray are not. it can be used in certain jurisdictions, it cannot in others propped up in recent years and ice investigations in detroit, drug investigations in baltimore, even in the monitoring of black lives matter protests and activism in chicago , this is an important story i did not quite have room to fit into the book but it tracks along with the history of wiretapping. the wiretap grows up in american law enforcement in the same

kinds of legal gray areas, questions like is it legal for law enforcement to wiretap if it is not necessarily permissible to use the fruits of that wiretap in a court of law? is it legal to tap a telephone in a state for the feds so to speak to tap a telephone in the state where wiretapping is prohibited. these are all kind of tangled eagle questions, questions of jurisdiction, questions of legal theory that get worked out over the course of a long century, until the 1960's. the use of the stingray, like the use of facial recognition technologies by law enforcement today, operates on similar kinds of legal gray areas and we will see how those questions get resolved as time unfolds. host: on a more recent tangled legal question, what was

operation root canal? guest: operation root canal was an effort by the fbi in the 1990's to essentially build a backdoor into the nation's evolving communications infrastructure. starting in the 1980's, with the breakup of the bell system and the technological revolution of communications that ensued with mobile phones, pagers, tax machines, and especially the revolution in fiber arctic communications -- fiber-optic communications and digital networks, this caused tremendous problems for law enforcement. it meant they could not necessarily wiretap lines in the way they had. in order to get around this problem, they sought political relief. in 1990, the fbi goes to

congress to begin to essentially force a communications industry to build surveillance capacities into their new networks. host: a backdoor. guest: essentially. the communications industry pushes back notably in the name of privacy but also in the name of off it and ultimately this leads to the passage of a landmark law often forgotten to this day in 1994 known as the comedic h and's assistance for law enforcement act. this is a law that requires surveillance companies -- comedic ancient companies to build surveillance into their networks. the internet was not covered under this but telephone communications and other forms

of data exchanges were. this was the first time the government essentially goes on record requiring innovation to be surveillance-ready. this is the result of this backdoor campaign on the part of the fbi that had called -- it's called operation root canal quite amusingly in my opinion. host: new jersey, this is cheri next. caller: good morning. since trump is not in office anymore and it is common knowledge the f guy tapped the white house, i was wondering, how many other presidents as the fbi tap in the white house while they were president? is there other presidents the fbi has spied on besides trump or his trunk the only one they have tap? what other presidents have -- host: that is your question,

from sherry. guest: the white house itself is not wiretapped as far as we know and we should note that any wires that were tapped in the trump administration was done under both fisa and title iii oversights. other presidents, most famously richard nixon, recorded their own conversations, so did lyndon johnson. nixon himself is well-known for weaponizing the use of the fbi and use of its surveillance capacities. so there is a great deal of precedent here as well. i'm not sure if that exactly answers the question, but, starting with johnson's president -- johnson, presidents often recorded their conversations by telephone and nixon himself, as the caller

probably knows, recorded his own exchanges in the oval office for a variety of reasons. we are not necessarily any unprecedented territory -- an unprecedented territory. host: you called the book a personal wiretap when somebody could record themselves and you talk about nixon in the white house. what about google home and alexa's that people have in their own homes and the questions that raised about wiretapping? guest: as i mentioned, the google home, the amazon alexa, these are not technically wiretaps. but they are listening devices and it is well-known that they listen to ambient noise, ambien conversations passively, even when you're not addressing them. this is an emerging area of research. one of the things i find so fascinating about the widespread use of alexa and alexa lite

technologies is how normal they are and how many americans, by far the majority, resigned themselves to the implication their conversations may be monitored in one form or another and it may be in their interests as consumers to have their data monitored. you will get better advertisements, better deals, and also it is this sort of gateway problem that we all have to accommodate ourselves to when we turn on our phones or go on the internet. we know our location will be tracked, we know that our conversations may be monitored. americans as late as the 1960's would have been horrified at our resignation, and one of the things i want to uncover in the book is just how it is that

resignation comes about, just how it is how our sense of wiretapping and eavesdropping is normal is the way the internet works, just the way our communication environment works. that is one of the stories the book tells. but yes, i think this is an emerging area of research and amazon alexa that you have in your home, it is listening. host: we have about 10 minutes left with brian hochman. you can keep calling in but in your book, you mentioned every american generation has a wiretapping scandal. what are some of the most interesting to you that we have not gotten to yet? guest: every generation seems to uncover wiretapping with fresh outrage about a decade or so --

there is a kind of cycle of resignation and outrage. the earliest national scandal pertaining to wiretapping in the united states happened in new york city in 1916. this was a very interesting and complicated affair that involved multiple entities. at the root of it was a slightly corrupt mayor's office that had coerced the new york police department or forced the police department to spy on catholic priests suspected of charity fraud. along the way, the nypd was working at the same time with a private investigator named william burns, who was, in those

days, the most private investigator in the united -- the most famous private investigator in the united states. this was a national scandal. it hit the headlines of every major newspaper across the united states in 1916-1917. what it was john mitchell's office was doing, these priests who had their telephone conversations tap and this private detective who was at the center of it in questionable ways. what is interesting about the scandal is all of the major players involved escaped unscathed and burns was at the center of the controversy nature became the first head of the bureau of investigation, the entity that would become the fbi. so wiretapping works in interesting ways. -- ways i found. these generational scandals were

somewhat surprising. to me to uncover. there also is of interesting stories for me to follow that i detail in the book and that would be ripe for further research as well. host: the book again, "the listeners: a history of wiretapping in the united states ." from harvard university press, brian hochman, a professor at georgetown, taking your phone calls about the history. this is randy in kentucky, good morning. caller: good morning. thank you. in the future they say they will be able to read your thoughts in the future. will you be responsible criminally for your thoughts you might have that are negative? also, what makes it a crime to have thoughts or to talk to somebody about committing a crime. i know you say it is conspiracy, but that person has paid taxes for that wire, transmission, or whatever, the internet. we pay taxes for that all of the time.

how come i do not get to share in that the way i get to equally or others and we continue to say everyone is a conspirator and we put them in prison for that without even committing a crime. host: professor? guest: so the story of the government or shadowy corporate entities or even a private citizens having the ability to wiretapped the brain the caller says, this is a very old story. in the 1960's, mainstream politicians were warning of the thought police, big brother, and the government's capacity to listen in using all manner of dystopian innovations such as to bug among others. the future is hard to say, hard to divine p i do not ever think

it would go that far. but i think there are some very interesting technologies that are in place today that we should think about as part of our future and part of the future of privacy in technology in america. the most important device i have been thinking about, practice i have been thinking about, technology i have been thinking about, one that resembles i think history of wiretapping to a great degree, is the use of facial recognition technology, particularly by law enforcement. this is a practice that has grown up in the gray areas of the law. it is also a practice that has great technological fallibility as investigative journalists and activists have uncovered. it is hard to say where the debate surrounding facial recognition -- debates around facial recognition are going to go. i think if history is any

pretext, we will be having these debates for a long time to come, which is why i think it is important to know where we came from. host: ohio, this is ed, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. my question is, you said wiretapping had such a hard time getting a hold in the united states opposed to other countries because the american citizens were so much against it . do you believe that is possibly still the case that the majority of america would not be wiretapped or it is against our civil rights to listen to our private conversations in that the federal government don't care and they do it they want to do in the name of get the drug dealers because, if you make anything so terrible it is -- it does not matter what we do to go after them, then it is ok to do it because they are so terrible.

that is all i got, thanks. host: this is a great question -- guest: this is a great question. i think all americans would be horrified if their line was tapped on a way or another. interestingly, all of the current social science research suggests that digital resignation, surveillance resignation has really eroded our sense of privacy and the vast majority of americans have accommodated themselves of monitoring of their data, their communications, in one form or another. what i think that means is fighting back against the

incursion of technology today is something of an up a battle, more of an uphill battle than it was even as late as 1966-1967. far more americans in those days , numerically speaking, had a mainstream, earnest commitment to privacy and congress in washington in the name of civil liberties and the name of civil rights also made good on those popular beliefs and the mainstream sense of privacy essential to american political life. again, today, that is not so much the case and not only have we resigned ourselves to our data be monitored by corporate firms, by social media companies , and the like, but also i think

we regard wiretapping, law enforcement surveillance that goes on in the name of enforcement priorities like the war on drugs as essentially good police work. there really has been an erosion over time, and while i think it is true -- and all of the callers would probably agree that -- if we had our own telephone tap, we would probably be horrified. at the same time, our research suggests we have resigned ourselves to this reality. that, i think, makes the future pretty cloudy for the ordinary american citizen. host: as we wait for the house to come in, a brief pro forma session this morning and we will take you for gavel-to-gavel coverage when they do. any interesting question on twitter but you could also take it historically as well, asking does the government just assume all unencrypted traffic is public information and therefore

fair game for the surveillance system? 20 specifically to internet traffic, but this is a question that could be asked time and again throughout american history. guest: it does and it does not. it depends on what kind of traffic, what platform you are using, the legal kind of protocols here and regulations are byzantine and numerous. generally speaking, the government has one rule we can say that holds throughout the history of wiretapping and electronic surveillance in america. from the 19th century to the present, the government is much more interested in data and communications that are at rest as opposed to those in motion, live. it is easier to get a hold of stored communications then it is

to sit on a wire or tap a telephone in the 1940's-19 50's. historic communications are much different and legally speaking it is easier for law enforcement to acquire those stored communications than to actually sit on your telephone line. those relationships are changing slightly as a result of landmark supreme court cases in mid 2010, but that rule still holds. host: for a lot more on the history of wiretapping in the united states, the book is "the listeners: a history of wiretapping in the united states ." the author, brian hochman, a professor at georgetown university on twitter, announcer: c-span's "washington journal," every day we take your calls live on the air on the news of the day and discuss policy issues that impact you.

coming up saturday morning we look at president biden's student loan forgiveness plan with jared of the center for american progress and christian cooper for the foundation of research and equal opportunity. in our spotlight on podcast segment we feature cohosts of the podcast this day in esoteric medical history who will talk about the importance of putting current events in a historical context. watch c-span's "washington journal" live at 7:00 eastern or on c-span now, our new mobile app. join the discussion with your phone calls, facebook comments, text messages, and tweets. ♪ announcer: on saturday nasa holds a prelaunch briefing on the agency's moon to mars expiration plans. among the speakers will be nasa

administrator bill nelson. live coverage begins at 2:30 eastern on c-span, you can also watch on our free mobile video app c-span now or online at c-span.org. announcer: next, president biden speaks with reporters regarding the classified documents the fbi recovered from former president trump's home. the president's comments came as he met with state and local officials to talk about abortion access at the white house.