Nowhere to Hide
23rd February 2014
Theodore Dalrymple reflects on one of the least charming aspects of modern life.
People who were charged with a crime in England used to be told by the police that they did not have to say anything, but that anything they did say might be taken down and used as evidence against them. I think we should all be given this warning whenever we use a mobile telephone.
I remember the last days of Ceau?escu’s Romania. If you went to someone’s home, he immediately put a cushion over the telephone because he assumed that it was bugged by a microphone. In embassies diplomats would speak to you only in basements deep in the ground that they believed had been cleared of all electronic apparatuses. But surveillance under Ceau?escu was crude and sporadic by comparison with the surveillance that we all undergo nowadays in free countries.