Trawling the Wires

Mass Surveillance of Border-crossing Communication in Denmark during World War II

Bibliographic Data

ID4020650
AuthorsAndreas Marklund (corresponding author)
Year2019
Volume60
Issue3
Pages770-794
Publication date2019-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueTechnology and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0040-165X • E-ISSN: 1097-3729
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/tech.2019.0072
PMID31422965
OpenAlexW2968586622
LanguageEN
References cited9

The article examines government censorship and surveillance of transnational communication in times of war and crisis. At the center of analysis is the monitoring of border-crossing telephony in Denmark during World War II. The system expanded decidedly during the war, in terms of staff and equipment, bureaucratic record-keeping and the forms communication deemed eligible for monitoring. Communication across borders had been perceived as a potential security problem already before September 1939. Yet the context of war made the problem grow in gravity from potential to very real, and people who communicated across the national borders became suspicious through the very act of communicating. Thus, increasing amounts of information were accumulated in an increasingly complex collaborative project between the Danish P&T, the Foreign Ministry, and the German security service Abwehr-information on citizens, foreigners, firms, and news agencies, but also on capital flows, propaganda schemes, and tendencies in foreign media reporting

Bureaucracy · Censorship · Context (archaeology) · National security · Political science · Politics · Public relations · History · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Public Administration

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