The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America From Slavery to the War on Terror

by Christian Parenti

On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail 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 in American life over the last two centuries-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. The Soft Cage offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives.

Genres: Politics, History, Nonfiction, Technology, Race, Academic, Journalism

286 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Christian Parenti is a contributing editor at The Nation, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a visiting scholar at the City University of New York. He has a Ph.D. in sociology from the London School of Economics. The author of Lockdown America, The Soft Cage, and The Freedom. Parenti has written for Fortune, The New York Times, Los AngelesTimes, Washington Post, Playboy, Mother Jones, and The London Review of Books. He has held fellowships from the Open Society Institute, Rockefeller Brother Fund and the Ford Foundation; and has won numerous awards, including the 2009 Lange-Tailor Prize and “Best Magazine Writing 2008” from the Society for Professional Journalists. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Reviews

[Dan Sharber · Rating 4 out of 5]

good book though nothing i did not already know it makes a good case against the extreme surveillance we are under at all times as well as pointing out the historical rise of this sort of thing and rooting it in the desire to control dissent and the bodies of the poor. if you like this book you should also read The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness - which is a fantastic book that delves deeper into the specifically criminal justice side of this. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century the Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century - also an amazing book that deals specifically with the workplace control (ie. taylorism) aspects of surveillance and control. and lastly Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America which deals with the rise of modern police forces out of the history of slave patrols. parenti discusses all of these to a greater or lesser degree but these three additional book delve deeper into the specifics. and are all worth reading on their own.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Worth reading if only for the chapter on UPS and how every single movement of an employee's job is scripted to ensure "maximum efficiency"- everything from scanning packages to having a driver buckle their seatbelt at the same time as they start the truck.

[Dennis Littrell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed, dense--and alarming?

We are domesticated animals; and it is said that domesticated animals are not as smart as the wild kind. We domesticate ourselves. We become more docile, more amendable to being controlled. We opt for security and creature comforts in lieu of freedom and privacy. We are settling gently into the "Soft Cage" of our eventual imprisonment.

Or are we? I have a feeling that by the time we realize what is going on, it will be too late. As Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, famously said in 1999 (quoted on page 91): "You already have zero privacy. Get over it."

After learning about the growing transparency of our lives, the question is, do we care? Should we care? Journalist and sociologist Christian Parenti believes that we should. He believes that the dossiers being gathered on us by business and government will be used against us.

He begins with an introductory chapter on "Life in the Glass Box" in which he sets forth his view on the situation today. He makes the subtle and excruciating point that it is the accumulation of surveillance, from Closed Circuit TVs on street corners to cookies on our computers to satellites in the sky to microchips soon to be on our credit cards and even implanted in our bodies, that is insidiously, piece by piece, stealing our privacy. He calls this "function creep." He compares the growth of surveillance to that of advertising and writes, "it is not that this or that ad is so oppressive, but a whole landscape and culture of commercialism most certainly is." (p. 7)

Parenti then goes back to the slave trade days and recounts how slaves were tracked and controlled. He recalls the beginnings of photography and the use of fingerprints and body measurements to identify criminals and other undesirables. As he moves toward the present, he examines various aspects of our lives from an historical, a present tense, and a futuristic perspective.

For example, he recalls the work and cult of efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor who published The Principles of Scientific Management in 1911. Parenti then demonstrates, that with the help of cameras, drug tests, lie detectors, computer software, and even Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) surveillance (of truck drivers and others on the road), management has gained even tighter control over employees. He calls this "The New Taylorism" (Chapter 10).

In Chapter 11, "The Benevolent Gaze," Parenti recounts a history of charities and social workers asserting their control and "guidance" over the poor and the homeless, while in Chapter 12, "The Eye of Justice," he details how the courts and the police are catching and controlling criminals both inside prison and out. Again GPS technology allows surveillance of parolees and others doing "street time."

One of his key ideas is "surveillance instills discipline by forcing self-regulation" (p. 9) For some, especially for employers, this is a good thing. Even for some wayward individuals, this may be a good thing. But down such a road lies fascism and a Brave New World of docile citizens. Parenti writes, "Instead of observation towers, checkpoints...and low-flying black helicopters...the emerging surveillance society is characterized by innocuous passwords, swipe cards, automatic toll lanes, and workplace IDs. Everywhere we leave digital footprints." (p. 79) We become "ultimately more governable." (p. 82) Parenti even sees Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "mullah of social control."(!) (p. 84)

Another key idea is that the goal of surveillance is to "internalize" the gaze of the watcher; that is to make us feel that Big Brother is always there and that we dare not do anything untoward. (See, e.g., pp. 174-175.)

Although Parenti is uniformly alarmed, I am less so. I think we need to realize that some aspects of increased surveillance are clearly positive. For example, there is nothing draconian about having cameras in public places like busy intersections. The cameras help regulate traffic and catch speeders and people who run red lights. Furthermore, the surveillance that some people use to protect their property may reveal an unhealthy level of paranoia, but that's a private concern. And if some people feel compelled to spy on their spouses, again that's a private concern. One might even go to the extreme and ask, why should we worry about losing our privacy? If we have nothing to hide, what's the problem?

This naive view is answered by realizing that your loss of privacy is somebody's else's increase in information about you. The more I know about you, the better I am able to manipulate you to my advantage. Information is power. Everybody has weaknesses, and if the government knows about those weaknesses, it may be able to lean on you to get you to do what it wants. Even the threat of making some information public may be enough to keep us in line.

Parenti also thinks we need to ask if the surveillance by government is applied evenly or is it targeted toward selected groups and individuals based on political considerations.

I would like to note that one of the effects of increased surveillance is to make our environment more like the tribal and small settlement communities in which humans evolved where everybody knew everybody else's business. The danger, as Parenti notes, is that government or a conspiracy of powerful interests will use information and their position to control populations in political and economic ways that benefit only the powerful. This danger is very real, and again one wonders how we can fight against it.

In a final paragraph Parenti exhorts us to tell "corporations, police, schools, hospitals, and other institutions that there are limits" and that "Here you may not go." Unfortunately, he doesn't tell us how to prevent the intrusions. One gets the sense that we may rail against the soft cage, or settle into it. Regardless, it is coming down around us.

--Dennis Littrell, author of “The World Is Not as We Think It Is”

[Max · Rating 5 out of 5]

awesome place to start re: surveillance. It’s from 2003 but it all applies just fine, since government invasions of our privacy have gotten worse not better -.-

[Spicy T AKA Mr. Tea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much like his other book Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis, the Soft Cage is another fine bit of work. Creepy and alarming, it depicts the very real surveillance gathering of corporations and government working hand in hand against their subjects.

[James · Rating 1 out of 5]

somewhat disappointing, not much info on how the surveillance is done,
rather a lot of "aint it awful that illegal aliens, people on welfare, etc are logged into databases so fedgov can't see what they are up to.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super detailed history of surveillance in America. Very good, but little doses in order to prevent a nervous breakdown...

[Diemoniker · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wouldn't read this if you're in any way inclined towards Philip K. Dickian paranoia. Just warning you.

[Jason · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of a handbook for paranoid, anti-government types. Very informative and really unsettling.

[Jackie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Early chapters on slave passes and cops trying to get everyone fingerprinted were excellent. Later chapters felt dated because we digital surveillance is way worse now than what it was in 2003!

[Nathan Pearson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keenly expansive in scope, and diligently researched -- this is no conspiracy theorist's rant, but an informative exploration of the history and broad relevance of the institutional gathering of personal information. Part way through, I've already learned some fascinating details on America's endless cycle of conflict over immigration (the chapter on 'paper sons' and other facets of Chinese immigration to California in the 19th century is particularly eye-opening), and the book makes crystal clear exactly why slave literacy was deemed so dangerous to the powers-that-were in the ante bellum American south.

[Theeba · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to read this book for work, and like Ward Churchill's "Agents of Repression" it got me thinking about surveillance, immigration and the war on terror in a whole new light.

[Bloblo · Rating 4 out of 5]

i read this right when it came out back around 2003 or 04. included is a history of the development of credit. that in itself is kind of interesting

[Elizabeth Brotherton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent expose on the perils of government surveillance from the time of slavery to post 911 interventions.

[Greer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I am being watched all the time