From the Back Cover
This is the first comprehensive text to cover this fascinating field from origins to present-day practices. Secret agents are no longer the only people using spycams, radio beacons, and tiny audio listening devices called 'bugs.' Spy devices are now an important part of almost every investigation, office environment, phone system, traffic advisory, and newscast, and are being incorporated into consumer devices in almost every home in the developed world. Never before has it been so important to learn about these technologiges and understand how they can affect your life, your government, your children, and your work.
This book is designed to be modular so you can read it in any order. Select the chapters that interest you, and follow the corss-references to find out more about related topics. Learn how one-meter-resolution satellites can see into your back yard, or the industrial yard down the street; find out how search and rescue professionals find lost hikers and victims of natural disasters. Learn how forensic experts solve cases using chemicals, microscopes, and minute traces of fibers and blood. Discover the history and progress of DNA research and how a simple cheek swab can identify an adoptee's biological relatives or establish a deadbeat parent's financial responsibilities.
This text is an excellent introduction for beginning surveillance professionals, including surveillance consultants, forensic investigators, law enforcement agents, and military recruits. It can also serve as a text for political science, sociology, and graduate business courses, laying a foundation for further study and professional development.
The text is extensively illustrated with more than seven hundred photos, diagrams, and charts to clarify the concepts, illustrate how the technologies are used, and provide examples of actual surveillance devices. Coverage includes over 900 pages organized into 18 chapters that include
- Acoustic Surveillance
Audio, Infrasound, Ultrasound, and Sonar Surveillance
- Electomagnetic Surveillance
Radio, Radar, Infrared, Visual, Aerial, Ultraviolet, and X-Ray Surveillance
- Chemical/Biological Surveillance
- Biometrics, Animal, and Genetic (DNA) Surveillance
- Magnetic Surveillance
- Cryptologic Surveillance
- Computer Surveillance
In addition to practical information on products and applications, this book provides extensive histories and information on legal debates and political decisions related to surveillance, privacy, and the protection of individual freedoms.
Understanding Surveillance Technologies includes references for further study in each chapter, including carefully annotated lists of books, articles, journals, Web sites, and films. Each chapter has a glossary of common terms related to that specific subject area. For the emerging field of surveillance, professionals are predicting this reference will be the industry standard introductory text.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Introduction & Overview
This book fills a significant gap in the literature related to surveillance. There are currently thousands of books about spies and international espionage, dozens of catalogs that list price information about 'spy' devices (though without any real explanation of their uses), and many recent books about loss of privacy from increasing levels of surveillance. There are also a few books on spy technologies as they relate to espionage and military use. However, until now, no book has adequately covered surveillance devices in a broader context so that readers can understand the origins and current practices of the technologies as they are used in a wide range of fields.
This volume discusses surveillance devices that are used in intelligence and military operations, but it differs from other books in that it provides a broader view of surveillance technologies that encompasses other applications including search and rescue, scientific enquiry, domestic applications, corporate security, skip tracing, and personal communications....
This volume does not cover the design and engineering of surveillance devices (there are no circuit board or installation diagrams).... It does provide a wealth of information on the prevalent technologies that aid humans in hearing, seeing, smelling, and otherwise detecting and recording trends and activities, people, places, wildlife, and natural disasters.
Surveillance devices are falling in price. They are showing up in mail order catalogs mixed in with ads for computer monitors and lawn furniture. A week's wages is now sufficient to set up a simple surveillance or security system whereas five years ago, the same setup would have cost several thousand dollars...
Chapter 9: Aerial Surveillance
... Aerial surveillance began when humans climbed trees and cliffs to get a better view of food, shelter, fuel sources, predators, and the activities of other people.... Not long after humans first flew in hot air balloons, they realized they could use telescopes, binoculars, and photographic equipment from better vantage points, to extend their ability to see and record from unprecedented heights and soon they began developing devices especially made for use on planes helicopters and spacecraft. [Image of U-2 spyplane with fake NASA stickers intended to support the U.S. contention that a downed U-2 was a weather plane that strayed unintentionally into Soviet airspace.]...
The capability to unobtrusively observe other people's business is power. With that power comes responsibility, whether or not it is mandated by law. Until the mid-1990s, the power of surveillance was mainly in the hands of local and federal government agents and, to a lesser extent, private detectives. This is no longer true... While military entities are still the only ones who can get the highest resolution imagery, sometimes accessible in realtime, the gap between the information available to civilians and those in traditional positions of power (e.g., national defense) has narrowed dramatically. Now this shift of access is putting a great deal of power and responsibiliy in the hands of a largely unregulated public which, in free societies, is bound to result in some unethical and unscrupulous behavior on the part of a percentage of individuals willing or eager to take advantage of others....
[Historic and current examples and illustrations of a broad range of aerial technologies follow.]
Chapter 15: Biochemical Surveillance: Genetics
.... Compared to many other types of surveillance, DNA evidence is easy to collect. You don't need advanced electronics skills and you don't have to set up complex equipment to get it. It doesn't cost anything to gather saliva, or hairs from a brush or a comb. The easy acquisition of DNA samples, compared to manyother types of information, makes this technology a significant information-gathering tool.
DNA analysis is a recent science and its use is not yet strongly regulated outside of law enforcement applications. When new technologies arise, there is usually a 'window of opportunity' during whicih public access is open and unlicensed, and during which certification standards for laboratory procedures are lenient....
DNA technology has created a new field of genetic surveillance, with powerful ways to spy on plants, animals, and humans. It allows them to be identified, tracked, monitored, and sometimes held accountable for their whereabouts. DNA proponents and opponents are lining up on both sides of a privacy controversy that is likely to remain an issue for a long time. Law enforcement officials have been lobbying for broader DNA collection powers, while prviate rights advocates have been lobbying for greater protection for individuals, whether or not they have been convicted of criminal activities.
[Historic information, illustrations, examples of types of DNA testing and field procedures and recommendations follow, along with political/social ramifications of the use of DNA testing.]
