This post is perfectly timed to the aftermath of the hubbub over the president’s recent speech on the NSA. Read it and you’ll understand why his proposals offer so little in the way of change at that agency. Historian of U.S. surveillance practices Alfred McCoy -- and an ever-popular TomDispatch author -- takes on the story of the NSA revelations in the context of history, emphasizing how the agency offers Washington such a (relatively speaking) cut-rate way to project power in an age of growing austerity that it has proven irresistible to two administrations. He also focuses on the ways in which American surveillance from 1898 in the Philippines to J. Edgar Hoover in the 1950s and 1960s to today has always been focused on the harvesting of scandal and the uses of blackmail. This is a genuine eye-opener on the nature of surveillance in our American world. Don’t miss it! Tom tomdispatch/blog/175795/
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 14:59:19 +0000
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