The Soft Cage

This work details the continuum of surveillance in the making of the United States - from the slave pass to the Social Security number all the way to the many forms of computerized monitoring shaping the post-9/11 world.

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A compelling, vitally important history lesson for everyone concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at a cash machine, visit the shopping centre, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail, logging your movements, schedules, habits, and political beliefs for government agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and journalist Christian Parenti points out, these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are part of a relentless (and clandestine) expansion of routine surveillance over the last two centuries in America - from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice and tracking immigrants. Parenti explores the role computers are playing in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies - such as credit cards, website 'cookies', and electronic toll collection - that have expanded this trend in the twenty-first century.