We Know All About You: The Story of Surveillance in Britain and America

by Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780191066559
Publisher:	OUP Oxford
Publication date:	04/07/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	857 KB

About the Author

Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones is Emeritus Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh and has held postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard, the Free University of Berlin, and Toronto. The founder of the Scottish Association for the Study of America, of which is he the current honorary president, he has also published widely on intelligence history, including The CIA and American Democracy (1989), The FBI: A History (2007), and In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence , the last of these also published by Oxford University Press (2013). He was the winner of the 2014 Neustadt Prize for the best UK book on American politics with The American Left: Its Impact on Politics and Society (2013).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1 A Survey of Surveillance
Chapter 2 The Private Eye Invades Our Privacy
Chapter 3 The Blacklist
Chapter 4 Franklin D. Roosevelt's Incipient Surveillance State
Chapter 5 McCarthyism in America
Chapter 6 McCarthyism in Britain
Chapter 7 COINTELPRO and 1960s Surveillance
Chapter 8 An Age of Transparency
Chapter 9 The Intensification of Surveillance Post-9/11
Chapter 10 Private-Sector Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century
Chapter 11 Snowden
Chapter 12 Policy and Reform in the Obama-Cameron Era
Conclusion
Introduction
1. A Survey of Surveillance
2. The Private Eye Invades our Privacy
3. The Blacklist
4. Franklin D. Roosevelt's Incipient Surveillance State
5. McCarthyism in America
6. McCarthyism in Britain
7. COINTELPRO and 1960s surveillance
8. An Age of Transparency
9. The Intensification of Surveillance Post-9/11
10. Private-Sector Surveillance in the Twenty-First Century
11. Snowden
12. Policy and Reform in the Obama-Cameron Era
Conclusion
Appendix
Bibliography

Editorial Reviews

03/20/2017
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. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"In this outstanding, brief overview of the history of surveillance and debates surrounding it in the UK and US, University of Edinburgh academic Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones challenges head-on Orwell's representation of the secret state in his celebrated dystopian novel... overall, the author has presented a convincing critique of Orwellian statism." Richard Lance Keeble, George Orwell Studies Vol. 2, No.1 2017

From the Publisher

06/15/2017
Jeffreys-Jones's (emeritus history, Univ. of Edinburgh, Scotland; In Spies We Trust: The Story of Western Intelligence) authoritative survey of mass surveillance in Britain and America is an antidote to conspiracy-speak and its toxic effect on our perceptions of government and private-sector intelligence. The complicated history—worsened by the Cold War and 9/11—of abuse and justice behind official policies, claims the author, calls for universal regulation and oversight, instead of scattering energies and budgets addressing individual concerns over cybermanipulation and even mind control. Most surprising is evidence that more lives are harmed daily by aggressive corporate misuse of credit data, employment histories (used for labor-market blacklisting), vacuuming of Internet searches, and social media snoops than an Orwellian Big Brother. Government agencies on both sides of the pond are burning through experts racing to defeat data-encryption keys more advanced than those in the hands of the FBI, NSA, and Britain's equivalents GCHQ and MI5. The resultant anxieties and tensions afflict whole populations and—as ever—big money controls big data. VERDICT A valuable book for anyone seeking a sober, if densely written, overview of the gap between defenders of privacy and defenders of national security, and how both are threatened by private-sector exploitation.—William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

Library Journal

2017-05-02
Evenhanded account of society's persistent embrace of surveillance for security and control.Jeffreys-Jones (Emeritus, American History/Univ. of Edinburgh; The American Left, 2013, etc.) views this controversial topic with a historian's dispassionate curiosity, noting that governmental surveillance can be justified due to terrorism, while for-profit spying often goes unquestioned. "The growing dangers of private surveillance are real," he writes, "and tend to be overlooked or subordinated to fears of state surveillance." The author uses historical narrative to demonstrate this insidious dynamic. In both the United States and Britain, 19th-century conflict between labor movements and robber-baron industrialists birthed early attempts at comprehensive surveillance, epitomized by the growth of detective services like the Pinkertons, who infiltrated radical miners' groups, leading to "a low point in the reputation of the private eye." In Britain, World War I spy services spawned a professionalized blacklisting industry, providing leverage over a restive working class: "Union troublemakers were identified through their activities, by means of scrutinizing the union and local press, and with the assistance of a league of informers." Jeffreys-Jones claims that the blacklisting of one element of a broader attack on labor is an "unofficial collaboration with the government." The supposedly populist Franklin D. Roosevelt set up a nascent security state in collaboration with J. Edgar Hoover before Pearl Harbor, spurred by the 1938 uncovering of a Nazi spy ring. The author also examines the creeping excess in America of the McCarthy and COINTELPRO periods as well as their less-known equivalents in Britain; in both nations, citizens "were willing to accept transgressions against privacy and civil liberties." While the 1970s saw a pivot toward protecting individual rights—and a congressional investigation of CIA excess—post-9/11 technologies and fears have surely eroded that progress. Jeffreys-Jones closes with an exploration of Edward Snowden's "personal set of principles," tying together these complex themes with a style that is lucid and approachable and only occasionally dry. Academic history light on bombast, with clear relevance to our current unsettled moment.

Kirkus Reviews