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TECHNOLOGY A23
Friday 26 February 2016
From Western Union to Apple: When tech battled government
TALI ARBEL ers read a telegram meant
AP Technology Writer for you, according to a
NEW YORK (AP) — The fight Mississippi Law Journal arti-
between Apple and the cle by Wesley MacNeil Oli-
FBI over access to a San ver, a Duquesne University
Bernardino killer’s iPhone law professor. But it was far
isn’t the first time industry less clear what evidence
and government have the government needed
tangled over privacy and to present a court to justify
security. Every revolution a wiretap.
in communications tech- Western Union, eager to let
nology has sparked new customers know it was look-
battles over its use that ing out for their privacy,
changed the course of law jumped at the opportunity
enforcement, surveillance to object to government
In this Sept. 25, 2015 file photo, a Apple iPhone 6S is displayed at an Apple store on Chicago.
Associated Press
mitted by the Constitution.
The company’s efforts
helped set a standard
for telegram subpoenas,
Oliver wrote. For instance,
the government had to
This undated photo shows a rotary dial telephone in Houston. provide a “reasonably ac-
Associated Press curate description of the
and civil liberties. subpoenas in the mid-to- paper wanted, either by
Here are a few famous late 1800s. The company its date, title, substance, or
cases that helped estab- would argue that the gov- the subject it relates to,” in-
lish the rules that govern ernment’s requests for in- stead of just requesting an
the government’s access formation were too broad “indiscriminate search” for
to our conversations and and that they were unrea- information contained in a
other personal details: sonable searches not per- broad swath of telegrams,
THE TELEGRAPH he said.
The telegraph upended
nineteenth-century no-
tions of time and distance,
making possible same-day This May 16, 1944 file photo shows a t device used by Western
Union which translates a telegram into holes on a tape, and
— and sometimes faster — then passes it along to the box-like apparatus at upper left.
communication where pre- Associated Press
viously it had taken days or
weeks for a mailed letter to
arrive by train or steamer. THE TELEPHONE porters and distributors in
Law enforcement efforts the 1920s. Federal agents
Its users, though, had little soared with Prohibition, tapped the phone com-
leading to a confrontation pany’s wires outside Olm-
expectation of privacy. All with phone technology. A stead’s company offices
particularly famous case and by his home in an era
messages passed through revolved around Roy Ol- when there was no warrant
mstead, a former Seattle requirement for doing so,
the hands of telegraph op- police officer who became said Richard Hamm, a his-
known as “King of the tory professor at the State
erators, and the telegrams Northwest Bootleggers” for University of New York at
running a ring of liquor im- Albany.q
themselves were easily ac-
cessible to government
agents.
Many states had privacy This March 20, 1944, file photo shows switchboard operators in
laws forbidding the tele- London.
graph company to let oth-
Associated Press
