Surveillance in America

Abstract

This is an interview with Christian Parenti hosted by Christopher Sprinkle for Flashpoints, a daily news magazine show heard on KPFA 94.1 FM, Berkeley, California, and other Pacifica Radio stations including affiliates, and produced by Dennis Bernstein, which aired on October 29, 2003. The subject of the interview is Parenti’s (2003) book, The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror. In his book, Parenti applied sociological analysis to the history of surveillance and the industry of dataveillance. He traced the history of surveillance in America back to its early use in monitoring slaves through World War II when the Nazis used IBM computers to help implement the final solution. In this interview, Parenti concisely described key aspects of his book while applying traditional sociological theoretical analysis to his findings. This compact and insightful interview neatly and sociologically extends traditional debates beyond public collective memory issues into a discussion about how private intelligence industries, which own, “mine,” and sell collected “commodity memory,” are affecting American society.