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.Eavesdroppers were easily avoided by walking to a place whereone could not be overheard.Although the colonists' application of English common law provided forthe punishment of eavesdroppers (Friedman 1973, p.254), more typically such crimes were handledby their discoverers (Flaherty 1989, p.89).The problem of the mail being less than private was less easily disposed of, for mail delivery entaileddependence on others.In colonial America mail delivery was haphazard; letters from Europe wouldbe left by a ship's captain at a local tavern, awaiting pickup by their intended recipients butmeanwhile open to inspection by all passersby.Within the colonies mail was delivered by travelersand merchants, or by special messengers, and privacy was likewise not assumed.In 1710, in creatinga postal delivery system in the colonies, the British government established privacy protection similarto what existed in England; at least in law, the opening of letters and other forms of tampering wasforbidden without authorization by the secretary of state (Seipp 1977, p.11).4Such protection, however, was incomplete.Before the establishment of the United States, PostmasterGeneral Benjamin Franklin believed that his own mail was being opened and read (Franklin 1907, pp.461-462).Later, Thomas Jefferson held a similar concern.5 In 1825 Congress addressed this problemwith the Postal Act (4 Stat.102, 109), which prohibited prying into another person's mail.Practice didnot necessarily follow the law.During the 1850s there were complaints about the ''greedy fingers"through which the mail passed,6 and during the Civil War there were government attempts to openprivate civilian mail.7 In 1878 the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not open first-class mail without a search warrant (Ex Parte Jackson, 96 US 727, p.733).The invention of the telegraph led to a new way of communicating and two new ways ofeavesdropping: one could tap the wire8 or one could read the messages later from copies kept by thetelegraph companies.The latter was the search method preferred by the government.At the beginning of the Civil War, the government took control of the telegraph wires and seizedcopies of all telegrams sent within the previous 12 months (Plum 1882, p.69).For the duration of thewar, the federal government censored all dispatches emanating from Washington (Randall 1951, pp.482-483).But the War Department did not have full success in controlling the medium.In 1864,attempting to track down the source of a false newspaper story that the president planned to call upan additional 400,000 men, the government sought copies of all telegrams sent out from Washington,but company operators refused to cooperate.They were arrested and held for several days until Armyinvestigators uncovered the perpetrator a stock manipulator (Bates 1907, pp.228- 243).Some of the complexity of the fight over the privacy protection afforded to telegraphs was due to thefact that, unlike the mails, this new communication medium was controlled by private enterprise.Thegovernment sought two seemingly contradictory goals: to protect privacy of communications from theprying eyes of operators (Seipp 1977, pp.83-95) and to establish broad search privileges for itself.Telegraph companies sought to assure the public that communications would be private (ibid., pp.89-90).The government's determination to obtain copies of telegrams pressed against this, and the conflictcame to a head in 1876 with the contested presidential election between Hayes and Tilden.During afight over electoral votes from Louisiana and Oregon, a House committee questioned the manager ofWestern Union's New Orleans office about telegrams.Under orders from Western Union's president,the manager refused to reveal the contents of the disputed dispatches.The House held the manager incontempt.Another Western Union manager in Oregon faced a similar situation with the Senate.Thecompany responded that it would henceforth destroy copies of telegrams as quickly as account keepingwould allow (New York Tribune 1876).However, the policy was never carried out, and on January 20,1877, with the manager of the New Orleans office in custody at the Capitol and the company'spresident ill, Western Union gave in to congressional pressure, and responded to the subpoena (Seipp1977, p.54)
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