The watchers
Using exclusive access to key government sources, Shane Harris chronicles the rise of the American surveillance state over the past 25 years and highlights a dangerous paradox: our government's strategy has made it harder to catch terrorists and easier to spy on the rest of us.
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What Hacker News says
- There's a great book on this, and related Pentagon initiatives called The Watchers:
http://www.amazon.com/Watchers-Rise-Americas-Surveillance-St...
- Politics and current affairs
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The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe. By Peter Godwin
The Watchers: The Rise of Americaâs Surveillance State. By Shane Harris
The Rule of Law. By Tom Bingham
The Pinch: How the Baby Boomers Took Their Childrenâs Futureâand Why They Should Give it Back By David Willetts
Biography and memoir
The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance. By Edmund de Waal
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The Cello Suites: J.S. Bach, Pablo Casals and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece.By Eric Siblin
History
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Economics and business
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More Money Than God: Hedge Funds and the Making of the New Elite. By Sebastian Mallaby
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Science and technology
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Fiction
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Poetry
Human chain. By Seamus Heaney
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(lets hear it for perl one-liners.)
- Shane Harris, author of The Watchers, reveals that U.S. intelligence agencies collect too much information to process competently.
"We have essentially created an official system of surveillance that is very good at collecting dots," he says, "and doesn't do a very good job of connecting them."
Here's the full video:
Shane Harris: The Rise of America's Surveillance State
http://fora.tv/2010/03/04/Shane_Harris_The_Rise_of_Americas_...
