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letter from london: The British scene.

Careless E-MailIn London and Detroit, politicians are reminded that phones are not as private as they imagined.

By Geoffrey Wheatcroft
Posted Friday, March 7, 2008, at 4:00 PM ET

(Continued from page 1)

Of course, there is nothing new about adultery, least of all on the part of politicians. What's new is electronic gadgetry, which has been both a blessing and a curse. It seems remarkably difficult for people to grasp that cell phones and e-mail simply aren't secure. The Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker Bowles (now an honest woman as the Duchess of Cornwall) were taught that in painful fashion when their improbable exchanges were intercepted and published.

More recently, the odious Andy Coulson was fired as editor of the News of the World, Rupert Murdoch's subhuman scandal sheet, when it transpired that he had been using a disreputable private eye to tap telephone calls by other royals. Coulson was forthwith hired by Cameron as director of communications for the Conservative Party, which says something about the age in which we live.

In what still like to call themselves free countries, we assume that the mail is private. At least until the Patriot Act is beefed up, there will, one trusts, be no American equivalent of the scene in the film The Lives of Others, when East Germany's Stasi work a machine to open everyone's letters and then reseal them (after identifying rotten elements for socialist re-education in a labor camp). But we didn't use to assume that about disembodied conversation.

For many years after the telephone was invented, even local calls went through an operator—hence Fats Waller's "Hello, Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz"—later, long-distance calls still did, hence Chuck Berry's "Los Angeles? Give me Norfolk, Virginia." Although parts of TV series Mad Men may be something of a caricature, the depiction of the switchboard girls at the ad agency is authentic enough, as they sit answering, routing, and—if they want—eavesdropping on calls.

And so our grandparents rarely uttered intimacies on the telephone, and never dark secrets, since it could be supposed that someone was listening. Now people have grown much more careless, even after endless evidence that we are all being overheard, at any rate if someone, somewhere has the energy.

It's all very sad, especially for Lee and Karen and Kwame and Christine. But perhaps we should have the decency to accept their denials of impropriety. Everyone uses slang and private language, and maybe "Did you miss me sexually?" was a way of saying, "Have you read those position papers about the downtown traffic problem?" Or Jasper's message could (dyslexia apart) be taken at face value, so that "honey glase" merely reveals an ardent shared interest in cooking.

Still, I would remind Jasper of what Jimmy Buchanan, Lord Woolavington, the Scotch whisky millionaire, used to say. He had been sustained through life by simple precepts: "Do right, and fear no man. Don't write, and fear no woman."

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Geoffrey Wheatcroft's book Yo, Blair! has just been published in Britain.
Photograph of Lee Jasper by Max Nash/AFP/Getty Images.
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