Gestapo Method Alleged: Issue Raised

Greymouth Evening Star, 15 October 1948, Page 4

Gestapo Method Alleged: Issue Raised

(P.A.) WELLINGTON, This Day. At question time in the House of Representatives today Mr T. L. MacDonald (Oppn, Mataura) gave notice to ask the Postmaster-General, Mr F. Hackett, if it was correct that a system of monitoring toll calls in telephone exchanges, adopted as a security measure in wartime, was still in operation? If so, did it apply only to toll conversations or were local conversations also listened to by departmental monitors? ’Mr MacDonald quoted from' the Auckland Press Association report published yesterday the statement that under the monitoring system introduced as a war measure and never discontinued the telephone supervisor, the telegraph-telephone superintendent and the monitor could listen in to the operators and the public. x rn . Mr W. A. Sheat (Oppn, Patea): The Gestapo. Mr Hackett, asking leave to make an immediate reply, said, that a system of monitoring had never been carried out by the Post Office. Its introduction was permitted in the early stages of the war as a security measure, but it was used only once and had not been operated since by the Post Office. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Holland: Was that the Christchurch case? Mr Hackett: No, it was something else.