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Title details for The Watchers by Shane Harris - Available

The Watchers

The Rise of America's Surveillance State

by Shane Harris
Kirby Heyborne
Audiobook
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Our surveillance state was born in the brain of Admiral John Poindexter in 1983. Poindexter, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, realized that the United States might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut if only intelligence agencies had been able to analyze in real time data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured government know-how and funds into his dream—a system that would sift reams of data for signs of terrorist activity. Decades later, that elusive dream still captivates Washington. After the 2001 attacks, Poindexter returned to government with a controversial program, called Total Information Awareness, to detect the next attack. Today it is a secretly funded operation that can gather personal information on every American and millions of others worldwide.


But Poindexter's dream has also become America's nightmare. Despite billions of dollars spent on this digital quest since the Reagan era, we still can't discern future threats in the vast data cloud that surrounds us all. But the government can now spy on its citizens with an ease that was impossible—and illegal—just a few years ago. Drawing on unprecedented access to the people who pioneered this high-tech spycraft, Shane Harris shows how it has shifted from the province of right-wing technocrats to a cornerstone of the Obama administration's war on terror.


Harris puts us behind the scenes and in front of the screens where twenty-first-century spycraft was born. We witness Poindexter quietly working from the private sector to get government to buy in to his programs in the early nineties. We see an army major agonize as he carries out an order to delete the vast database he's gathered on possible terror cells—and on thousands of innocent Americans—months before 9/11. We follow General Mike Hayden as he persuades the Bush administration to secretly monitor Americans based on a flawed interpretation of the law. After Congress publicly bans the Total Information Awareness program in 2003, we watch as it is covertly shifted to a "black op," which protects it from public scrutiny. When the next crisis comes, our government will inevitably crack down on civil liberties, but it will be no better able to identify new dangers. This is the outcome of a dream first hatched almost three decades ago, and The Watchers is an engrossing, unnerving wake-up call.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 16, 2010

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400194827
      • File size: 432315 KB
      • Duration: 15:00:39

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      NATIONAL JOURNAL correspondent Shane Harris examines the U.S. government's surveillance programs over the past quarter-century. Narrator Kirby Heyborne skillfully tells the story of how spying on U.S. citizens has become both easier and legal, and is now the cornerstone of the Obama administration's national security strategy. Heyborne captures the tone of this book perfectly while describing a fascinating chronicle of America's war on terror using electronic technology--from 1983, when the U.S. Marines' barracks in Lebanon were attacked, to the present. This production is also an arms-length biography of John Poindexter, Ronald Reagan's National Security Advisor. B.C.E. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      November 9, 2009
      Harris, a reporter for National Journal
      , details the rise of a “band of mavericks” in national security and intelligence organizations that has erected “an American surveillance state.” In this timely and admirably balanced account, Harris focuses on the role of a handful of key figures, including Reagan-era National Security Adviser John Poindexter, as they campaigned for information technology to identify terrorists. The controversial Poindexter started the campaign after the 1983 bombing of Marine barracks in Lebanon; the mission was imbued with greater urgency after September 11; with the support of the Bush administration, the National Security Agency (NSA) acquired a research project that Poindexter had developed called Total Information Awareness that uses advanced data-mining techniques to collect mountains of data—and has trapped countless innocent citizens in the NSA’s “electronic nets.” After the NSA’s warrantless surveillance was exposed in 2005, Congress passed largely cosmetic reforms that left the surveillance state intact. Harris carefully examines how the nexus between terrorism and technology has complicated the age-old “conflict between security and liberty” and calls for a national debate on the issue. This informative and dramatic narrative is an excellent place to start.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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