The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Attempts to keep an eye on Americans are nothing new, Parenti argues in this well-researched albeit pedantic history of ways people have been controlled in the U.S. Relying on the theories of scholar Michel Foucault-who used surveillance and control as two of his central themes-Parenti begins with slavery, focusing on the slave passes that slaveowners used to keep their human property in place. He then moves on to new crime controls, like fingerprinting, that accompanied increased urbanization. Throughout, he emphasizes how new technology has always increased the government's ability to spy on its citizens. So it's no surprise that the current rise in technology comes in for special criticism. Credit cards, ATMs, highway toll passes such as E-ZPass are all tools that the government can employ to curtail freedom. There's a lot of food for thought here (and some troubling aspects of American history brought to light). But Parenti's lens is too sharp and his antigovernment animus too apparent. As he himself admits, most Americans seem to think that some liberties are worth trading in if they bring more security. There's no doubt that books focusing on this topic can be helpful contributions to the national discourse, but when Parenti sees post-September 11 not as a shift toward cracking down on civil liberties but as more of the same, many readers will likely feel he is a bit off base.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Concerns about the tension between national security and privacy rights are as old as the nation itself. Parenti explores the historical and sociological roots of government surveillance, what he calls the soft cage, in the name of national interests, from slave owners' attempts to control slaves to modern police efforts to control crime. Social security cards, drivers' licenses, and credit cards all provide digital tracers for surveillance. Parenti exposes the threat to individual privacy posed by government efforts to maintain security and corporate efforts to gather market research. Surveillers can use technology from the monitoring potential of e-mail and cookies to the global positioning capabilities of cellular phones to the black boxes in the latest car models that record the driver's actions. Parenti overlays analysis of class and race with concerns about surveillance of individuals to produce an absorbing look at how we are being watched, observed, and analyzed, with implications beyond concerns for privacy rights. Vernon Ford
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (September 2, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0465054846
• ISBN-13: 978-0465054848
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,071,375 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Detailed, dense--and alarming?, December 12, 2003

By	Dennis Littrell (SoCal) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

We are domesticated animals; and it is said that domesticated animals are not as smart as the wild kind. We domesticate ourselves. We become more docile, more amendable to being controlled. We opt for security and creature comforts in lieu of freedom and privacy. We are settling gently into the "Soft Cage" of our eventual imprisonment.

Or are we? I have a feeling that by the time we realize what is going on, it will be too late. As Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously said in 1999 (quoted on page 91): "You already have zero privacy. Get over it."

After learning about the growing transparency of our lives, the question is, do we care? Should we care? Journalist and sociologist Christian Parenti believes that we should. He believes that the dossiers being gathered on us by business and government will be used against us.

He begins with an introductory chapter on "Life in the Glass Box" in which he sets forth his view on the situation today. He makes the subtle and excruciating point that it is the accumulation of surveillance, from Closed Circuit TVs on street corners to cookies on our computers to satellites in the sky to microchips soon to be on our credit cards and even implanted in our bodies, that is insidiously, piece by piece, stealing our privacy. He calls this "function creep." He compares the growth of surveillance to that of advertising and writes, "it is not that this or that ad is so oppressive, but a whole landscape and culture of commercialism most certainly is." (p. 7)

Parenti then goes back to the slave trade days and recounts how slaves were tracked and controlled. He recalls the beginnings of photography and the use of fingerprints and body measurements to identify criminals and other undesirables. As he moves toward the present, he examines various aspects of our lives from an historical, a present tense, and a futuristic perspective.

For example, he recalls the work and cult of efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor who published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. Parenti then demonstrates, that with the help of cameras, drug tests, lie detectors, computer software, and even Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) surveillance (of truck drivers and others on the road), management has gained even tighter control over employees. He calls this "The New Taylorism" (Chapter 10).

In Chapter 11, "The Benevolent Gaze," Parenti recounts a history of charities and social workers asserting their control and "guidance" over the poor and the homeless, while in Chapter 12, "The Eye of Justice," he details how the courts and the police are catching and controlling criminals both inside prison and out. Again GPS technology allows surveillance of parolees and others doing "street time."

One of his key ideas is "surveillance instills discipline by forcing self-regulation" (p. 9) For some, especially for employers, this is a good thing. Even for some wayward individuals, this may be a good thing. But down such a road lies fascism and a Brave New World of docile citizens. Parenti writes, "Instead of observation towers, checkpoints...and low-flying black helicopters...the emerging surveillance society is characterized by innocuous passwords, swipe cards, automatic toll lanes, and workplace IDs. Everywhere we leave digital footprints." (p. 79) We become "ultimately more governable." (p. 82) Parenti even sees Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "mullah of social control."(!) (p. 84)

Another key idea is that the goal of surveillance is to "internalize" the gaze of the watcher; that is to make us feel that Big Brother is always there and that we dare not do anything untoward. (See, e.g., pp. 174-175.)

Although Parenti is uniformly alarmed, I am less so. I think we need to realize that some aspects of increased surveillance are clearly positive. For example, there is nothing draconian about having cameras in public places like busy intersections. The cameras help regulate traffic and catch speeders and people who run red lights. Furthermore, the surveillance that some people use to protect their property may reveal an unhealthy level of paranoia, but that's a private concern. And if some people feel compelled to spy on their spouses, again that's a private concern. One might even go to the extreme and ask, why should we worry about losing our privacy? If we have nothing to hide, what's the problem?

This naive view is answered by realizing that your loss of privacy is somebody's else's increase in information about you. The more I know about you, the better I am able to manipulate you to my advantage. Information is power. Everybody has weaknesses, and if the government knows about those weaknesses, it may be able to lean on you to get you to do what it wants. Even the threat of making some information public may be enough to keep us in line.

Parenti also thinks we need to ask if the surveillance by government is applied evenly or is it targeted toward selected groups and individuals based on political considerations.

I would like to note that one of the effects of increased surveillance is to make our environment more like the tribal and small settlement communities in which humans evolved where everybody knew everybody else's business. The danger, as Parenti notes, is that government or a conspiracy of powerful interests will use information and their position to control populations in political and economic ways that benefit only the powerful. This danger is very real, and again one wonders how we can fight against it.

In a final paragraph Parenti exhorts us to tell "corporations, police, schools, hospitals, and other institutions that there are limits" and that "Here you may not go." Unfortunately, he doesn't tell us how to prevent the intrusions. One gets the sense that we may rail against the soft cage, or settle into it. Regardless, it is coming down around us.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Mostly Thorough History of Privacy Violations in America, June 3, 2004

By	Charles J. Rector (Woodstock, IL United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is a revealing history of how government intrudes on individual rights, inlcuding the right of privacy. Parenti reveals, for instance, that one of the first uses of fingerprinting was as a method of keeping Indians on the reservation. Especially interesting is Parenti's revelation of the widespread government domestic spying apparatus used to harry critics of the American political establishment, especially under the reign of J. Edgar Hoover as FBI director.

The only real drawback to Parenti's book is that he gives but little coverage to recent instruments of repression such as the Patriot act. Other than his skimpy coverage of the last few years, Parenti's book is recommended reading for Americans concerned with governmental intrusions on civil liberties.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars thorough must read, October 30, 2003

By	bill leboutieller (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Most of you reading this probably use a cell phone and credit card all the time. Well, you've got to arm yourself with real analysis and information and that can be found in this well-written, accessible, entertaining and very important book. The routine information that is aggregated as we speak (and as I type this) is a reality. As we confront the Patriot Act and the machinations of the current cabal, who knows how it can be used against dissent. The book has excellent chapters on the history of surveillance and especially workplace surveillance. Read away, you won't be disappointed.