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
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
The autocomplete function on your phone comes in handy, of course. But is it changing the way we write and how linguists study language? Also, suppose you could invite any two authors, living or dead, to dinner. Who’s on your guest list and...