The Soft Cage
"The Soft Cage explores the hidden history of surveillance - from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice, tracking immigrants, and closely monitoring the poor as part of modern social work. It also explores the role computers play in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies - such as credit cards, website "cookies," electronic toll collection, "data mining," and iris scanners at airports." "With fears of personal and national security at an all-time high, this ever-growing infrastructure of high-tech voyeurism is shifting the balance of power between individuals and the state in groundbreaking - and very dangerous - ways. From closed-circuit television cameras to the Department of Homeland Security, 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."--Jacket.
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What Hacker News says
- A book to read on the history of surveillance technology, starting with "pass papers" for slaves to finger prints:
The Soft Cage - Surveillance in America: From Slavery to the War on Terror, Christian Parenti, 2003
- I think this is feeding into a prevalent and false narrative that persons in poverty are all drug addicts or welfare queens.
Christian Parenti really sums it up well when he describes American views on poverty in his book, The Soft Cage:
"In a society that denies the true causes of poverty—low wages and structural unemployment—the poor necessarily show up as objects of mystery to be examined, measured, interrogated, and indexed, or as James C. Scott would put it, made “legible.” In a society that hides the real mechanics of exploitation and sees all social phenomena through the lens of individualism, it is assumed that the poor—their genetics, their habits, or their culture—must be the true cause of poverty."[1]
Specifically with respect to your point about drugs:
"Reports such as the National Survey of Drug Use and Health suggest drug abuse among welfare recipients is hardly widespread. Many states have tried drug testing for welfare recipients with practically nobody testing positive. In Arizona, for example, in 2012, after three years and 87,000 screenings, one person had failed a drug test. Utah's drug screening program spent $30,000 on testing and only 2.5% of recipients turned out positive for illicit drugs. Florida's program had the same results.
"In all cases, the testing -- which assumes all welfare recipients are druggies -- cost much more than the savings in welfare payments."[2]
We need to stop acting paternalistically toward the poor and, instead, treat them as people who are capable of making their own decisions.
[1] http://openlibrary.org/books/OL7593829M/The_Soft_Cage
[2] http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/30/opinion/granderson-michigan-we...
