We Know All About You
The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
We Know All About You shows how bulk spying came of age in the nineteenth century, and supplies the first overarching narrative and interpretation of what has happened since, covering the agencies, programs, personalities, technology, leaks, criticisms and reform. Concentrating on America and Britain, it delves into the roles of credit agencies, private detectives, and phone-hacking journalists as well as government agencies like the NSA and GCHQ, and highlights malpractices such as the blacklist and illegal electronic interceptions. It demonstrates that several presidents - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard M. Nixon - conducted political surveillance, and how British agencies have been under a constant cloud of suspicion for similar reasons.
We Know All About You continues with an account of the 1970s leaks that revealed how the FBI and CIA kept tabs on anti-Vietnam War protestors, and assesses the reform impulse that began in America and spread to Britain. The end of the Cold War further undermined confidence in the need for surveillance, but it returned with a vengeance after 9/11. The book shows how reformers challenged that new expansionism, assesses the political effectiveness of the Snowden revelations, and offers an appraisal of legislative initiatives on both sides of the Atlantic.
Micro-stories and character sketches of individuals ranging from Pinkerton detective James McParlan to recent whisteblowers illuminate the book. We Know All About You confirms that governments have a record of abusing surveillance powers once granted, but emphasizes that problems arising from private sector surveillance have been particularly neglected.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Despite Jeffreys-Jones s impressive credentials (he is an emeritus professor of American history at the University of Edinburgh and the author of In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence), this survey of the history and current state of surveillance in the U.S. and U.K. disappoints. Its main value for American readers will be its review of how differently the American and British governments have handled the familiar tensions of balancing security and freedom. The author focuses on what he terms the understudied phenomenon of private surveillance, though many recent books have also looked at how companies use consumer data, which is often obtained covertly. His conclusions are unsurprising: where governments possess surveillance powers they will, eventually, abuse them, and private companies sometimes also exploit the techniques of surveillance in an abusive manner. Some digressions detract from the central focus, such as a passage about the rise in the use of private eyes for divorce work during the 20th century. Idiosyncratic writing ( Nixon s bugging of Watergate headquarters prompted Mao Zedong to raise his Red eyebrow ) makes for unnecessary distraction.
