The most awesome comment from AT&T was that "this telephone system offers a means of espionage to which general warrants and writs of assistance were the puniest instruments of tyranny and oppression".
[I]t is better that a few criminals escape than that the privacies of life of all the people be exposed to the agents of the government, who will act at their own discretion, the honest and the dishonest, unauthorized and unrestrained by courts
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/08/how-ma-bell-fought-you...
The most awesome comment from AT&T was that "this telephone system offers a means of espionage to which general warrants and writs of assistance were the puniest instruments of tyranny and oppression".