Who's Watching You?

Conspiracy Books

by Mick Farren, John Gibb

The threat of terrorism and the corresponding climate of fear encouraged by the government have together eroded our freedom to live our lives in peace and quiet away from the prying eyes of hidden cameras. The government is tightening its grip on us by watching and recording what we do. They are doing this because they know they can and because knowledge is power. But exactly who are "they" and why do they want to know so much about us? This book includes chilling, accurate, and uptodate descriptions of the methods the government (and private company proxies) use to watch us.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics

256 pages, Paperback

First published July 20, 2005

About the author

Farren was the singer with the proto-punk English band The Deviants between 1967 and 1969, releasing three albums. In 1970 he released the solo album Mona – The Carnivorous Circus which also featured Steve Peregrin Took, John Gustafson and Paul Buckmaster, before leaving the music business to concentrate on his writing.

In the mid-1970s, he briefly returned to music releasing the EP Screwed Up, album Vampires Stole My Lunch Money and single "Broken Statue". The album featured fellow NME journalist Chrissie Hynde and Dr. Feelgood guitarist Wilko Johnson.

He has sporadically returned to music, collaborating with Wayne Kramer on Who Shot You Dutch? and Death Tongue, Jack Lancaster on The Deathray Tapes and Andy Colquhoun on The Deviants albums Eating Jello With a Heated Fork and Dr. Crow.

Aside from his own work, he has provided lyrics for various musician friends over the years. He has collaborated with Lemmy, co-writing "Lost Johnny" for Hawkwind, and "Keep Us on the Road" and "Damage Case" for Motörhead. With Larry Wallis, he co-wrote "When's the Fun Begin?" for the Pink Fairies and several tracks on Wallis' solo album Death in a Guitar Afternoon. He provided lyrics for the Wayne Kramer single "Get Some" in the mid-1970s, and continued to work with and for him during the 1990s.

In the early 1970s he contributed to the UK Underground press such as the International Times, also establishing Nasty Tales which he successfully defended from an obscenity charge. He went on to write for the main stream New Musical Express, where he wrote the article The Titanic Sails At Dawn, an analysis of what he saw as the malaise afflicting then-contemporary rock music which described the conditions that subsequently gave rise to punk.

To date he has written 23 novels, including the Victor Renquist novels and the DNA Cowboys sequence. His prophetic 1989 novel The Armageddon Crazy deals with a post-2000 United States which is dominated by fundamentalists who dismantle the Constitution.

Farren has written 11 works of non-fiction, a number of biographical (including four on Elvis Presley), autobiographical and culture books (such as The Black Leather Jacket) and a plethora of poetry.

Since 2003, he has been a columnist for the weekly Los Angeles CityBeat.

Farren died at the age of 69 in 2013, after collapsing onstage while performing with the Deviants at the Borderline Club in London.

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating. The authors explore several aspects of government and corporate snooping and surveillance, starting with casinos as the example and testbed for a lot of the technology and methods and moving on to examine the ways countries and businesses spy on each other and on us. They cover the territory pretty thoroughly, including national and international programs that listen in on our telephone conversations, emails, and text messages; tracking of our purchases and buying patterns in stores and online to build databases that are surprisingly effective at predicting other behavior, political and not; the use of cameras in public to watch our actions, with and without the addition of facial recognition and body-language-interpreting software; satellite surveillance; the growth of artificial intelligence (AI) systems and the prospects of computers achieving consciousness and then autonomy, and where they might go from there; and, finally, the problems that arise when governments go beyond collecting information and start using it as the basis for repressive and abusive actions against individuals, like the CIA's 'extraordinary rendition' program. Surprisingly, after an entire book filled mostly with dire and discouraging information, they end on a hopeful note, positing a future in which people en masse stop being compliant and start engaging in civil disobedience, creating countercultures, and so on. Some paranoid conspiracy theory, but mostly pretty plausible information, a lot of which is well documented.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

America is not the only country where the threat of terrorism, and the subsequent encouraging of that fear by the State, has led to the steady erosion of civil liberties for the average individual. This book explores the situation in Britain, said to be the most watched society on Earth.

No one knows just how many closed circuit TV cameras are working in Britain at any given moment; estimates range from 2 to 3 million. The average person could find themselves on a CCTV screen up to 300 times a day. No longer do bored security guards have to sit in front of rows of TV screens. New software allows the system to distinguish between normal and abnormal behavior. Such abnormal behavior is automatically flagged and displayed on the one TV screen for the guard to analyze.

The retailers of this world are building up a more comprehensive portrait of an individual’s purchases and buying habits, with that person’s willing consent. It is done through recording credit card transactions and the use of store discount cards (Is a discount of a few percent on your purchase really worth giving all of your personal information to some retailer’s database?). What the retailers don’t know about a person, the credit reporting agencies do know. Their information comes from a seemingly infinite array of sources, and accuracy of the information is not guaranteed.

Echelon is a global electronic interception system that aims to capture every phone call, email, fax and telex communication between America, Europe and the Middle East. It is run by the National Security Agency, with help from its British, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand counterparts. A major listening station is at a place called Menwith Hill in Yorkshire. Without the absolutely highest security clearance, don’t even bother trying to get in. Members of the European and British do not have such clearance. France is building its own smaller version of Echelon, using current satellite technology.

This is a fascinating, and pretty spooky, book. There is a list of groups in the back of the book working on various aspects of the privacy issue. About all a person can do is to keep any more civil liberties from disappearing in the name of security (those liberties that are gone are not coming back anytime soon). This book is recommended for everyone; those who know their way around this issue, and those who know nothing about this issue.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book looks at the current state of privacy in America, which has been steadily eroded by the threat of terrorism and the climate of fear encouraged by the state. It is not a pretty picture.

The carrying of a national ID card, implanted with an RFID chip that could record a person’s movements, and which may have to be produced on request of any representative of the state, is not some vague possibility; in May 2008, it will become a reality. The average shopper is more than willing to give up their personal information to retailer’s databases, some of which are more comprehensive than those held by governments, all in exchange for a discount of a few percent. Have you ever heard of ECHELON? It has certainly heard of you. It is a worldwide electronic monitoring system that aims to check all phone calls, faxes, telexes and emails between Europe, America and the Middle East, supposedly for possible terrorist activity.

If there is such a thing as The Database that contains all information on the average American, it is probably the one held by Atlanta-based ChoicePoint Corporation. They get their information from many different sources, and sell it to many different types of clients. If the information on a person’s report is faulty, and there is a good chance that something on the report is wrong, oh well. ChoicePoint does not consider itself subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which gives Americans a chance to fix faulty information. America is not the only country that has sophisticated spy satellites in orbit, able to take very detailed pictures of practically anything. A new industry has emerged around home-based surveillance, like nanny-cam’s that work over the Internet, and systems to monitor and record everything your kids do online.

What can be done? The most that can be done by the average person is to keep any more privacy from disappearing; that which is already gone is gone, it is not coming back. The book contains a list, with web addresses, of American and British groups working on the privacy front.

This book is better than excellent. It is more than a little spooky, it is easy to read, and is highly recommended, even for those who know their way around the worlds of privacy and surveillance.

[jonah grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

Surveillance is neither a phenomenon of the 20th century nor is it a product of human technological advancements. The Crusades, the Inquisition, Nazi`s Hitler Youth, Stalin`s The Pioneers, Mao`s Red Guards (to name a few) invaded privacies in the name of religion and political enveiglement. Now, here`s one more to add to the list: corporate agenda and fear. Surveillance technologies are so pervasive - from your own home to grocery stores to satellites in outer space - that it is nearly impossible to escape it. In this book, Farren & Gibb suggest that “the only thing we can do is get used to it,” if we aren`t already. The authors delve into the ways we all spy on each other: parents on their children, friends on friends, employers on their employees, and most importantly, corporations & government spying on, well, everyone. They explain how unimaginable computer capabilities for data access, micro-processing, storage, and cross-referencing, allows for the entire population to be constantly watched. If that`s not bad enough, all these information is kept, to be used and/or sold, with or without our consent, and more often than not, to our own detriment.

[Charles Kato · Rating 5 out of 5]

Do you find yourself hopelessly paranoid about government bureaucracies, the corporate Gestapo, eyes in the sky, or even our addiction to social networking sites? Yeah, neither did I. Who’s watching you? by Mick Farren and John Gibb is a disturbing exposé about our technology driven world that will make you think twice about performing the simplest of tasks. This book covers everything from facial recognition, corporate data mining, and biomimetrics, all the way up to the potential power of Google as an A.I. entity and the already robust control of the ECHELON interception network. If the idea of simply being watched doesn’t bother you because you believe in the now trite expression, “If you have nothing to hide, there’s nothing to worry about,” then maybe the possibility of mandatory retinal scans and virtual slave collars for all world citizens doesn’t concern you either. But for the rest of us who prefer to not be herded like senseless sheep this book is definitely worth taking a look at,,, while you still can, that is.

[Ubiquitousbastard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Disclaimer: I did not read this of my own volition, it was required reading for a class.
Having said that, I did like it better than the other book I had to read for the same class, because this one actually makes sense. Sometimes it gets a little sensationalist/over-the-top, but overall I think it did a pretty good job of painting an accurate picture of government and corporate surveillance, and the effects therein. It's also rather readable for a book of this...genre. I managed to finish it in two sittings without wanting to stab my eyes out. It's a bit outdated now, with some of the programs or companies already shut down, but it illustrates a pattern which is probably more important than mentioning specific offenders.
So, I'm not sure if I'd really recommend this to anyone I know. The people that would be interested in it probably already know the information, and everyone else...won't believe it or won't care.

[Wendy · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting well researched book telling just how extensively we are being monitored and how well it is kept hidden . Also the way in which they have "justified" the invasion of our privacy and how we have become "blinded" to the real impact it has had on our privacy and rights as "free" citizens. Might be easier to list who isnt watching.

[Paula · Rating 4 out of 5]

revealing, depressing, true.
even though it tends to be that kind of one-side opinion book, it's well-written for a journalist from Sunday Express. Maybe a bit too much data for a Saturday morning reading, but Gibb did his best presenting those facts.

[Lauryn · Rating 2 out of 5]

this book is certainly an eye opener. it's interesting but towards the end it does feel like a school text book, a little to factual. worth reading though if you're nto all that big brother stuff

[Kynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting and frightening account of how the US is no longer free.

[Γιάννης · Rating 1 out of 5]

Very boring book. I dropped it in the middle and it took much patience from my side to reach that point.