The United States has poured over a billion dollars into a network of interagency intelligence centers called "fusion centers." These centers were ostensibly set up to prevent terrorism, but politicians, the press, and policy advocates have criticized them for failing on this account. So why do these security systems persist? Pacifying the Homeland travels inside the secret world of intelligence fusion, looks beyond the apparent failure of fusion centers, and reveals a broader shift away from mass incarceration and toward a more surveillance- and police-intensive system of social regulation. Provided with unprecedented access to domestic intelligence centers, Brendan McQuade uncovers how the institutionalization of intelligence fusion enables decarceration without fully addressing the underlying social problems at the root of mass incarceration. The result is a startling analysis that contributes to the debates on surveillance, mass incarceration, and policing and challenges readers to see surveillance, policing, mass incarceration, and the security state in an entirely new light.

A most timely publication in view of current concerns about snooping. Thomas Mathiesen describes how the major databases of Europe have become interlinked and accessible to diverse organizations and third States; meaning that, largely unchallenged, a 'Surveillance Monster' now threatens rights, freedoms, democracy and the Rule of Law. As information is logged on citizens' every move, data flows across borders via systems soon to be under central, global or even non-State control. Secret plans happen behind closed doors and 'systems func tionaries' become defensive of their own role. Goals expand and entire processes are shrouded in mystery. Alongside the integration of automated systems sits a weakening of State ties as the Prum Treaty and Schengen Convention lead to systems lacking transparency, restraint or Parliamentary scrutiny. As Mathiesen explains, the intention may have been fighting terrorism or organized crime, but the means have become disproportionate, unaccountable, over-expensive and lacking in results which ordinary vigilance and sound intelligence in communities should provide.

Video surveillance, public records, fingerprints, hidden microphones, RFID chips: in contemporary societies the intrusive techniques of surveillance used in daily life have increased dramatically. The "war against terror" has only exacerbated this trend, creating a world that is closer than one might have imagined to that envisaged by George Orwell in 1984.How have we reached this situation? Why have democratic societies accepted that their rights and freedoms should be taken away, a little at a time, by increasingly sophisticated mechanisms of surveillance?From the anthropometry of the 19th Century to the Patriot Act, through an analysis of military theory and the Echelon Project, Armand Mattelart constructs a genealogy of this new power of control and examines its globalising dynamic. This book provides an essential wake-up call at a time when democratic societies are becoming less and less vigilant against the dangers of proliferating systems of surveillance.

A practical, user-friendly handbook for understanding and protecting our personal data and digital privacy. Our Data, Ourselves addresses a common and crucial question: What can we as private individuals do to protect our personal information in a digital world? In this practical handbook, legal expert Jacqueline D. Lipton guides readers through important issues involving technology, data collection, and digital privacy as they apply to our daily lives. Our Data, Ourselves covers a broad range of everyday privacy concerns with easily digestible, accessible overviews and real-world examples. Lipton explores the ways we can protect our personal data and monitor its use by corporations, the government, and others. She also explains our rights regarding sensitive personal data like health insurance records and credit scores, as well as what information retailers can legally gather, and how. Who actually owns our personal information? Can an employer legally access personal emails? What privacy rights do we have on social media? Answering these questions and more, Our Data, Ourselves provides a strategic approach to assuming control over, and ultimately protecting, our personal information.

Political discourse on immigration in the United States has largely focused on what is most visible, including border walls and detention centers, while the invisible information systems that undergird immigration enforcement have garnered less attention. Tracking the evolution of various surveillance-related systems since the 1980s, Borderland Circuitry investigates how the deployment of this information infrastructure has shaped immigration enforcement practices. Ana Muniz illuminates three phenomena that are becoming increasingly intertwined: digital surveillance, immigration control, and gang enforcement. Using ethnography, interviews, and analysis of documents never before seen, Muniz uncovers how information-sharing partnerships between local police, state and federal law enforcement, and foreign partners collide to create multiple digital borderlands. Diving deep into a select group of information systems, Borderland Circuitry reveals how those with legal and political power deploy the specter of violent cross-border criminals to justify intensive surveillance, detention, brutality, deportation, and the destruction of land for border militarization.

'This book will change the way you think about today's new media technologies' - Daniel J. Solove, author of ""The Digital Person: Technology and Privacy in the Information Age"". Whether you're purchasing groceries with your Safeway 'club card' or casting a vote on ""American Idol"", those data are being collected. From Amazon to iTunes, smart phones to GPS devices, Google to TiVo - all of these products and services give us an expansive sense of choice, access, and participation. Mark Andrejevic shows, however, that these continuously evolving new technologies have also been employed as modes of surveillance and control, most disturbingly exemplified by revelations about the NSA's secret monitoring of our phone calls, e-mails, and internet searches. Many contend that our proliferating interactive media empower individuals and democratize society. But, Andrejevic asks, at what cost? In ""iSpy"", he reveals that these and other highly advertised benefits are accompanied by hidden risks and potential threats that we all tend to ignore. His book, providing the first sustained critique of a concept that has been a talking point for twenty years, debunks the false promises of the digital revolution still touted by the popular media while seeking to rehabilitate, rather than simply write off, the potentially democratic uses of interactive media. Andrejevic opens up the world of digital rights management and the data trail each of us leaves - data about our locations, preferences, or life events that are already put to use in various economic, political, and social contexts. He notes that, while citizens are becoming increasingly transparent to private and public monitoring agencies, they themselves are unable to access the information gathered about them - or know whether it's even correct. (The watchmen, it seems, don't want to be watched.) He also considers the appropriation of consumer marketing for political campaigns in targeting voters and examines the implications of the Internet for the so-called War on Terror. In ""iSpy"", Andrejevic poses real challenges for our digital future. Amazingly detailed, compellingly readable, it warns that we need to temper our enthusiasm for these technologies with a better understanding of the threats they pose - to be able to distinguish between interactivity as centralized control and as collaborative participation.

Since the terrorist attacks of September 2001, surveillance has been put forward as the essential tool for the aEURO"war on terror,aEURO(t) with new technologies and policies offering police and military operatives enhanced opportunities for monitoring suspect populations. The last few years have also seen the publicaEURO(t)s consumer tastes become increasingly codified, with aEURO"data minesaEURO(t) of demographic information such as postal codes and purchasing records. Additionally, surveillance has become a form of entertainment, with aEURO"realityaEURO(t) shows becoming the dominant genre on network and cable television.In The New Politics of Surveillance and Visibility, editors Kevin D. Haggerty and Richard V. Ericson bring together leading experts to analyse how society is organized through surveillance systems, technologies, and practices. They demonstrate how the new political uses of surveillance make visible that which was previously unknown, blur the boundaries between public and private, rewrite the norms of privacy, create new forms of inclusion and exclusion, and alter processes of democratic accountability. This collection challenges conventional wisdom and advances new theoretical approaches through a series of studies of surveillance in policing, the military, commercial enterprises, mass media, and health sciences.