The entire "going dark" narrative presupposes that the era of the wiretap is the one true background from which to judge the present. But long before there was

The entire "going dark" narrative presupposes that the era of the wiretap is the one true background from which to judge the present. But long before there was a wiretap a warrant was mostly useless for listening in on private conversations because there was nothing to wiretap and nothing to wiretap with. Was the pre-telephone and pre-microphone era some kind of lawless hell on earth where law enforcement was completely helpless to do anything?