Society and the Surveillance State?

This page considers writing about the 'surveillance state', commenting on the extensive literature about the 'invisible government' and questioning some myths about historical or contemporary 'police states'.

It covers -

• introduction
• the secret state
• the intelligence-industrial complex
• reds under the bed, flatfeet in the closet?
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Canada
• UK and EU
• US
• Russia and USSR
• revisionist views
• united states of paranoia?

The history of particular surveillance agencies discussed in a later page of this profile.

     introduction

The notion of the 'surveillance state' - claimed to be uniquely modern, both quantitatively and qualitatively different to past regimes - has been a major feature of recent debate about privacy, security and the governance of cyberspace. It has been reflected in claims that US citizens want protection from government more than from business and, more luridly, that 'secret governments' (an intelligence-industrial complex) shape public consciousness or render democratic governments irrelevant.

Typically the 'surveillance state' centres on -

• identifying
• categorising
• tracking
• recording

its citizens (and those of other jurisdictions) through systematic use of digital technologies while -

• restricting access to information (official secrets), an important mechanism against moves to increase the accountability or efficiency of particular agencies, and
• shaping public consciousness through disinformation and information overload

It responds to threats -

• from groups (eg the International Workers of the World pre-1925, international/domestic Communism 1917-80s, stooges in the pay of the CIA, Islamic Jihad ...) or
• technologies (the H Bomb, bioterror)

that either have a substantive basis or merely serve to legitimate the activities of particular agencies and elites. The 'death of distance' means that it blurs traditional demarcations between domestic/external agencies and about activities that seep across national/provincial borders. Some analysts have equated the surveillance state with imperialism or merely with 'late capitalism'.

An alternative view - for us more convincing - instead emphasises bureaucratic aggrandisement, the imperative to use new technologies (evident in much e-business) and the dilemmas of articulating and effectively responding to national security challenges, a task akin to pinning jelly to a moving wall.

Points of entry into the literature are William Staples' The Culture of Surveillance: Discipline and Social Control in the United States (New York: St Martin's Press 1997), Policing Politics: Security Intelligence & the Liberal Democratic State (London: Cass 1994) by Peter Gill, Surveillance, Power & Modernity (Cambridge: Polity 1990) by Christopher Dandeker, The Rise of Computer State (New York: Vintage 1983) by David Burnham and The Electronic Eye: The Raising of Surveillance Society (Cambridge: Polity 1996) by David Lyon.

Noam Chomsky & Edward Herman's Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (New York: Pantheon 1988) offers a view from the left that to us is disturbingly ahistorical and elides crucial differences between totalitarian and more open states. It is complemented by Terrorism & Tyranny: Trampling Freedom, Justice & Peace to Rid the World of Evil (New York: Palgrave 2003) or Freedom in Chains: The Rise of the State & the Demise of the Citizen (New York: Palgrave 2000), James Bovard's equalling romantic views from the right, or by Robert Stove's quirky The Unsleeping Eye: A Brief History of Secret Police & Their Victims (Sydney: Duffy & Snellgrove 2002). The Intruders: Unreasonable Searches & Seizures from King John to John Ashcroft (New Brunswick: Rutgers Uni Press 2004) by Samuel Dash offers a US view.

For a perspective on tensions between democracy and security see Best Truth: Intelligence & Security in the Information Age (New Haven: Yale Uni Press) by Bruce Berkowitz & Allan Goodman and The Nation-State and Violence (Cambridge: Polity 1987) by Anthony Giddens.

     the secret state

For the NSA and affiliated 'e-int' agencies see James Bamford's Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency From the Cold War Through the Dawn of a New Century (New York: Doubleday 2002) and The Puzzle Palace: A Report on NSA, America's Most Secret Agency (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1982) and The Shadow Factory: The Ultra- Secret NSA From 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America (New York: Doubleday 2008), Deep Black: Space Espionage and National Security (New York: Random 1986) by William Burrows and the classic The Codebreakers (New York: Macmillan 1972) by David Kahn.

There is a somewhat breathless acount in Total Surveillance: Investigating the Big Brother World of E-Spies, Eavesdroppers & CCTV (London: Piatkus 2000) by John Parker and Bits, Bytes & Big Brother: Federal Information Control in the Technological Age (New York: Praeger 1995) by Shannon Martin. Arthur Miller's The Assault on Privacy Computers, Data Banks, Dossiers (Ann Arbor: Uni of Michigan Press 1971) and Computers, Surveillance, and Privacy (Minneapolis: Uni of Minnesota Press 1996) edited by David Lyon & Elia Zureik remain of significance.

Questions about the scope of official secrecy are considered here, with a complementary discussion of Freedom of Information (FOI) and Archives regimes.

     the intelligence-industrial complex

Although it is clear that there's considerable sharing of information between government agencies, businesses and individuals (including aid workers, scholars and journalists) the impact of that sharing is uncertain. Much of the speculation about grand strategy appears to be misplaced.

Two points of entry into the literature are Economic Intelligence & National Security (Ottawa: Carlton Uni Press 1998) edited by Evan Potter and The US Intelligence Community (Cambridge: Ballinger 1989) by Jeffrey Richelson.

Less scholarly attention has been devoted to more mundane questions about the shape and scale of the surveillance industry, which encompasses a continuum from nightwatchmen and private investigators to vendors of supercomputers for parsing voice traffic and biometric solutions for restrictiong access to particular facilities/data.

     reds under the bed, spooks in the closet?

For a comparative analysis of undercover surveillance see Undercover: Police Surveillance in Comparative Perspective (The Hague: Kluwer 1995) edited by Cyrille Fijnaut & Gary Marx. Marx' lucid Undercover: Police Surveillance in America (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 1988) and Paul Cowan's State Secrets: Police Surveillance in America (New York: Holt Rinehart Winston 1974) consider activity in the US.

As noted later in this profile, even the most totalitarian states have relied heavily on self-policing - in particularly denunciation by colleagues, neighbours, customers and relatives. The eagerness with which people have dobbed each other in, out of idealism or from baser motives (jealousy, revenge, interest in a financial reward, escape from a relationship), has frequently been noted by scholars but is less recognised in popular culture, which often portrays 'us' as victims of 'them' (ie omnipresent officials).

An historical perspective is provided by Accusatory Practices: Denunciation in Modern European History, 1789-1989 (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 1997) edited by Sheila Fitzpatrick & Robert Gellately, complemented by works such as Timothy Garton Ash's The File: A Personal History (London: HarperCollins 1997) and Anna Funder's Stasiland (London: Granta 2003).

For postal surveillance, one of the dirtier little secrets of contemporary communication, see Philip Stenning's Postal Security & Mail Opening: A Review of the Law (Toronto: Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto 1981) about practice in Canada. US library monitoring is highlighted in Herbert Foerstel's Surveillance in the Stacks; the FBI's Library Awareness Program (Westport: Greenwood 1991).

     Australia

Writing about the Australian official surveillance system has followed two tangents: work (often of a high quality) based on archival documentation about agencies up to the 1950s and studies by Desmond Ball and others of Australia's involvement in international electronic data collection/sharing. There is regrettably no major synthetic work that draws together all the threads over the past century.

Irrespective of regional pretensions, Australia appears destined to remain a junior partner of its intelligence allies: of significance for its collection of information on their behalf (geography still matters) but not having access to much of the analysis.

For early agencies see in particular Frank Cain's The Origins of Political Surveillance in Australia (Sydney: Angus & Robertson 1983), extended by Breaking the Codes: Australia's KGB Network, 1944-1950 by Desmond Ball & David Horner and Cain's Terrorism & Intelligence in Australia: A History of ASIO & National Surveillance (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing 2008)

For the contemporary epoch see David McKnight's Australia's Spies and Their Secrets (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin 1995), The Ties that Bind. Intelligence Cooperation between the UKUSA Countries (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1985) by Desmond Ball & Jeffrey Richelson and Tudor Harvey Barnett's disingenous Tale of the Scorpion (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin 1988).

We have discussed individual Australian agencies in more detail later elsewhere on this site.

     New Zealand

Like Australia, New Zealand's international significance over the past thirty years has been as real estate for parking dishes that access global telecommunication traffic. An account is provided in works by Ball & Richelson and Nicky Hagar's more impassioned Secret Power: New Zealand's Role in the International Spy Network (Nelson: Craig Potton 1996).

     Canada

The literature on the Canadian surveillance state - "so far from God, so close to the USA" - is comparatively thin.

Key works are Richard Cleroux's Official Secrets: The Story behind the Canadian Intelligence Service (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryerson 1990), Stanley Cohen's Invasion of Privacy: Police Electronic Surveillance in Canada (Toronto: Carswell 1983). Most public attention has centred on the exploits of - or abuses by - the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Two points of entry into the literature are John Sawatsky's Men in the Shadows: The RCMP Security Service (Toronto: Doubleday 1980) and For Services Rendered: Leslie James Bennett and the RCMP Security Service (Toronto: Doubleday 1982).

     the UK and EU

The notion of the UK surveillance state has been popularised by works such as Duncan Campbell's The Unsinkable Aircraft Carrier: American military power in Britain (London: Michael Joseph 1984) and On the Record: Surveillance, Computers & Privacy (London: Michael Joseph 1986) with Steve Conor or Simon Davies' overheated Big Brother - Britain's Web of Surveillance and the New Technological Order (London: Pan 1997).

A more nuanced approach is offered by historian Peter Hennessy in Whitehall (London: Secker & Warburg 1989) and The Secret State: Whitehall and the Cold War (London: Allen Lane 2002), complemented by works such as Beneath The City Streets (London: Allen Lane 1983) by Peter Laurie and Know Your Enemy: How the Joint Intelligence Committee Saw the World (London: Murray 2002) by Percy Cradock.

     the US

There have been almost as many books on the CIA and other US agencies there have been sightings of Elvis. Unfortunately much of the writing is as fevered and circumstantial as that about the King.

Points of entry are The American Police State: The Government Against the People (New York: Random 1976) by David Wise, Cloak & Dollar: A History of American Secret Intelligence (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2002) by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Domestic Intelligence (Austin: Uni of Texas Press 1980) by Richard Morgan, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the C.I.A. (New York: Doubleday 2007) by Tim Weiner, Spying on Americans (Philadelphia: Temple Uni Press 1978) by Athan Theoharis, Surveillance & Espionage in a Free Society (London: Praeger 1972) by Richard Blum, Privacy and Freedom (New York: Atheneum 1970) by Alan Westin, The Age of Surveillance: the Aims & Methods of America's Intelligence System (New York: Vintage 1981) by Frank Donner and Freedom vs. National Security Secrecy & Surveillance (New York: Chelsea House 1977) by Daniel Hoffman & Morton Halperin. Works on the FBI include Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave & the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34 (New York: The Penguin Press 2004) by Bryan Burrough.

       USSR and Russia

Most writing about USSR agencies has reflected the literature about the US, ie spy-running and spy-catching rather than day to day tracking of ordinary citizens. 'Smoke & Mirrors' has meant that until the recent - and very partial - opening of archives much of the work was problematical.

Accounts include Christopher Andrew & Oleg Gordievsky's KGB: The Inside Story (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1990), The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB (London: Hodder & Stoughton 1999) by Andrew & Vasili Mitrokhin, George Leggett's The Cheka: Lenin's Political Police (New York: Oxford University Press 1981) and Stalin and His Hangmen: The Tyrant & Those Who Killed for Him (New York: Random 2004) by Donald Rayfield. There is a serviceable although dated bibliography in Raymond Rocca & John Dziak's Bibliography on Soviet Intelligence & Security Services (Boulder: Westview 1985). For policing see L Shelley's Policing Soviet Society (London: Routledge 1994).

Studies of predecessors include the popular The Russian Secret Police: Muscovite, Imperial, and Soviet Political Security Operations (New York: Simon & Schuster 1970) by Ronald Hingley, Richard Deacon's A History of the Russian Secret Service (London: Frederick Muller 1972) and Frederic Zuckerman's insightful The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880-1917 (New York: New York Uni Press 1996). Dominic Lieven's 'The Security Police, Civil Rights, and the Fate of the Russian Empire, 1855-1917' in Civil Rights in Imperial Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1989) edited by Olga Crisp and Linda Edmondson is of particular value.

For the recent history of domestic security agencies see Amy Knight's The KGB: Police and Politics in the Soviet Union (Boston: Unwin Hyman 1990) and Yevgenia Albats' slighter The State Within a State: The KGB and Its Hold on Russia Past, Present and Future (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux 1994).

Studies of satellite regimes include Edward N. Peterson's The Limits of Secret Police Power: The Magdeburger Stasi, 1953-1989 (New York: Peter Lang 2004) and Stasi-Akten zwischen Politik und Zeitgeschichte: Eine Zwischenbilanz (Munich: Olzog 2003) edited by Siegfried Suckut & Jurgen Weber

     revisionist views

Recent work on totalitarian regimes has centred on the mechanics of social control and voluntary commitment by - rather than co-option of - much of the population in Nazi Germany or Italy to watching and informing on both fellow citizens and those considered to be outside the community.

Three of the more significant works are Robert Gellately's The Gestapo and German Society 1933-1945 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1991) and Backing Hitler: Consent & Coercion in Nazi Germany (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2001) and Eric Johnson's Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews & Ordinary Germans (New York: Basic Books 1999).

     and  the united states of paranoia?

Readers of Richard Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics and David Brion Davis' The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the Present (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 1971) will recognise that suspicion of the men in black is as American as apple pie.

Timothy Melly's Empire of Conspiracy: The Culture of Paranoia in Postwar America (Ithaca: Cornell Uni Press 2000), highlighted later in this profile, comments that a range of works have contributed - others would say merely legitimised - anxiety about the way the way technologies, government/business bureaucracies and communication systems have "reduced human autonomy and uniqueness".

Those works include Norbert Wiener's Cybernetics (1948), David Riesman's The Lonely Crowd (1950), William Whyte's The Organization Man (1956), Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders (1951), Herbert Marcuse's One Dimensional Man (1964), Charles Reich’s The Greening of America (1970), and Michel Foucault's gnomic - and frequently ahistorical - tracts such as Discipline & Punish (1977) and Madness & Civilization (1988).





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