Big Brother is Listening: phonetappers & the security state

By Duncan Campbell

Year: 1981 Pub: New Statesman

Synopsis

State surveillance in Britain, conducted in the name of 'security,' is untrammeled. No government has ever come clean on the extent of of telephone tapping and other forms of secret surveillance. All aspects of secret surveillance are rigorously shielded by the cloak of the Official Secrets Act.

This booklet pierces that barrier. In a series of articles which stirred considerable national and international interest, Duncan Campbell describes British and American operations to listen in on individual telephones and communications. The accounts start with the expose of Tinkerbell, the Post Office-run national phone tapping centre in Chelsea, where thousands of lines are tapped each year.