Sir: Why is there all this fuss about D Notices
concerning the Post Office reading cablegrams and any other sources of information that pass through its hands? The collecting of information in this way has been, and probably always will be, one of the functions of the Post Office. The matter is fully described and documented by Kenneth Ellis in The Post Office in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford 1958), from which the follow- ing is a quotation: 'The Post Office created in- telligence by opening, detaining or copying corre- spondence and sending interceptions to Secretaries of State.' This practice certainly was not advertised widely, but apparently it was fully legalised by the Post Office Act 1711, which confirms that of 1663.
Cohn Brown Savage Club, 37 King Street, Covent Garden, London WC2
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