Surveillance Blowback

Read “Surveillance Blowback: The Making of the U.S. Surveillance State, 1898-2020,” by Alfred W. McCoy. Professor McCoy is the author of The Politics  of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Traffic (New York: Lawrence  Hill Books, revised, 2003), Policing  America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the  Surveillance State (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2009), and Torture and Impunity: The U.S. Doctrine of Coercive Interrogation (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2012). From suppressing the Filipino Insurrection following the Spanish-American War to the destructive counterinsurgency campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, these martial exercises in unlawful, extra-constitutional behavior have continued unabated. And like a destructive twist on the parable of the prodigal son of New Testament scriptures, they have come home to the National Security State with a vengeance.   

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