retail eavesdropping
n.— «Some might picture an agent climbing a telephone pole and attaching a wire to a telephone line, but such a technique, called retail eavesdropping, is only useful for going after one phone line at a time.» —“NSA Rolls with Tech Changes to Keep Spying” by Lisa Vaas eWeek June 4, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...