Details

Subject(s)

• United States Federal Bureau of Investigation—History [Browse]
• Electronic surveillance—United States—History—20th century [Browse]
• Electronic surveillance—United States—History—21st century [Browse]
• Internal security—United States—History—20th century [Browse]
• Internal security—United States—History—21st century [Browse]
• Political crimes and offenses—United States—History—20th century [Browse]
• Political crimes and offenses—United States—History—21st century [Browse]

Biographical/​Historical note

David H. Price is Professor of Anthropology at Saint Martin's University's Department of Society and Social Justice. He is the author of a number of books on the FBI and CIA, and has written articles for The Nation, Monthly Review, CounterPunch, Guardian and Le Monde. His work has been translated into five languages.--Back cover.

Summary note

"When the possibility of wiretapping first became known to Americans they were outraged. Now, in our post-9/11 world, it's accepted that corporations are vested with human rights, and government agencies and corporations use computers to monitor our private lives. David H. Price pulls back the curtain to reveal how the FBI and other government agencies have always functioned as the secret police of American capitalism up to today, where they luxuriate in a near-limitless NSA surveillance of all. Price looks through a roster of campaigns by law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and corporations to understand how we got here. Starting with J. Edgar Hoover and the early FBI's alignment with business, his access to 15,000 pages of never-before-seen FBI files shines a light on the surveillance of Edward Said, Andre Gunder Frank and Alexander Cockburn, Native American communists, and progressive factory owners. Price uncovers patterns of FBI monitoring and harassing of activists and public figures, providing the vital means for us to understand how these new frightening surveillance operations are weaponized by powerful governmental agencies that remain largely shrouded in secrecy."--Back cover.

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references (pages 330-345) and index.

Contents

• Preface
• Acknowledgmetns
• Abbreviations and codenames
• Introduction: Contextualizing old patterns and new shifts in American surveillance.
• Part I. The long view : historical persepctives of American surveillance: 1. J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI's institutionalization of surveillance
• 2. Memory's half-life : notes on a social history of wiretapping in America
• 3. The new surveillance normal : government and corporate surveillance in the age of global capitalism.
• Part II. Lanting those with a communist taint: 4. The dangers of promoting peace during times of [Cold] War : Gene Weltfish, the FBI, and the 1949 Waldorf Astoria's Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace
• 5. Tribal communism under fire : Archie Phinney and the FBI
• 6. The FBI's history of undermining legal defences : from jury panel investigations to defense lawyer surveillance programs
• 7. Agents of apartheid : Ruth First and the FBI's historical role of enforcing inequality. --
• Part III. Monitoring pioneers and public intellectuals: 8. How the FBI spied on Edward Said
• 9. Seymour Melman and the FBI's persecution of the demilitarization movement
• 10. Traces of FBI efforts to deport a radical voice : on Alexander Cockburn's FBI file
• 11. Medium cool : decades of the FBI's surveillance of Haskell Wexler
• 12. Blind whistling phreaks and the FBI's historical reliance on phone company criminality
• 13. The FBI and Candy Man : monitoring Fred Haley, a voice of reason during times of madness
• 14. David W. Conde, lost CIA critic and Cold War seer.
• Part IV. Policing global inequality: 15. E.A. Hooton and the biosocial facts of American capitalism
• 16. Walt Whitman Rostow and FBI attacks on liberal anti-communism
• 17. André Gunder Frank, the FBI, and the bureaucratic exile of a critical mind
• 18. Angel Palerm and the FBI : monitoring a voice of independence at the organization of American states
• 19. The FBI's pursuit of Saul Landau : portrait of the radical as a young man.
• Conclusion: Unbroken chain : connecting seven decades of American surveillance and harassment of progressives, activists, visionaries, and intellectuals - Notes
• Bibliography
• Index.

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Other title(s)

American surveillance state : how the United States spies on dissent

ISBN

• 0745346014 ((paperback))
• 9780745346014 ((paperback))
• 0745346022 ((hardcover))
• 9780745346021 ((hardcover))

OCLC

1304815084

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