There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment . . . You had to livedid live, from habit that became instinct in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
In a hotel room near Boston one night recently, a private detective sat down before a television set and leaned back to enjoy a local show that, if aired nationally, might outdraw Dragnet. The private eye, hired by an angry husband to get the goods on his playful wife, was...