------------------------------ From: Jim Thomas >jthomas@well@sf.ca.us< Subject: Review of PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE Date: 14 June, 1991 ******************************************************************** *** CuD #3.21: File 4 of 7: Review of PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE *** ******************************************************************** Review of: PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE: RED SQUADS AND POLICE REPRESSION IN URBAN AMERICA, by Frank Donner. Berkeley: University of California Press; 503 pp. $34.95 (cloth). Reviewed by Jim Thomas, Northern Illinois University Sandy Sherizen's review of Gary Marx's UNDERCOVER (file 3, this issue) demonstrates the potential dangers of covert police work to the cyberworld. Frank Donner's PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE extends Marx's work by illustrating the potential dangers of state intrusion into the lives of those who appear to challenge a preferred view of the world. Imagine the following scenario dredged from the depths of paranoid fantasies: Stodgy, a massive computer system into which over 750,000 customers call for benign services such as shopping by computer or arranging travel plans, provides each customer with a package of software that connects Stodgy's computer to each user's personal home computer. Now, imagine that this software is highly proprietary and nobody is really quite sure what it does when it is in the home computer. It could provide many user-friendly conveniences, such as replacing and deleting old versions of itself; it can scan the home computer's operation system and files to assure smooth functioning and non-disruption of other existing programs, and it assure smooth communication between the home and master unit. However, communication means that the home computer is giving information, albeit of a benign technical nature, just as it is receiving it. Now, add a different scenario. Law enforcement agents suspect that a serial killer is also a computer afficianado and subscribes to Stodgy. Agents request that Stodgy add a component to their software that allows it to scan through all the files, and even deleted files, in a user's home computer and transfer that information back to the offices of Stodgy, who would in turn give it over to agents for analysis. With such user-interface software, it becomes quite possible to collect copious quantities of private, personal information from millions of citizens and keep computerized files on citizens for the professed noble goal of protecting the social order. What does this have to do with Frank Donner's "Protectors of Privilege?" The basis of a democratic society rests on the ability of citizens to openly discuss competing ideas, challenge political power and assemble freely with others. These fundamental First Amendment rights are subverted when, through neglect, the state fails to protect them. Worse, they are shattered when the state itself silences political dissent and disrupts freedom of assembly. PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE details silencing of the worst sort: State agents who systematically used their power and resources to subvert the democratic process by targeting generally law-abiding private citizens for surveillance, "dirty tricks," or violence. Given the revelations from the report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (Church Report) in 1975 and from other sources, it is hardly a secret that local, state, and federal agencies have engaged in extreme covert surveillance and disruption of groups or individuals of whom they disapprove. However, Donner does not simply repeat what we already know. The contribution of PROTECTORS OF PRIVILEGE lies in Donner's meticulous research of the scope and depth of political surveillance and in pulling together the voluminous data within an implicit conflict paradigm (although he neither uses this term nor alludes to his work in this fashion) to illustrate how surveillance has historically been employed to protect the interests of those in power in the guise of safeguarding democracy. The roots of political surveillance, Donner argues, began with the state's intervention in labor unrest in the nineteenth century. In Chicago, for example, the police "unambiguously served as the arm of the dominant manufacturing and commercial interests" and dispersed strikers, raided meetings, and terrorized demonstrators (p. 11). By portraying labor activists as a threat to the commonweal, the police acquired public support--or at least tolerance--to subvert First Amendment rights of freedom of speech and association. Although Donner perhaps overstates the quiescence of labor and radical groups in the early twentieth century, he correctly identifies Depression-era activism as the source of a new phase of government suppression. Former FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, in MASTERS OF DECEIT, equated Communism with cancer, and cancer was a disease to be eradicated. Hoover's views and policies serve as an icon for understanding the fear of a nebulous social menace that justified the organization of special, usually secret, "red squads" within police agencies of large urban cities in the post-depression years, and the social unrest of the 1960s further stimulated data acquisition on and disruption of those whose politics were judged as unacceptable. Donner devotes the bulk of his study to the period between 1960-80, and and focuses on the major U.S. cities (Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles). Drawing from court documents, files obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, media accounts, and other sources, an image emerges of law enforcement run amok in its efforts to amass information, much of it useless or fabricated, to disrupt dissenters who appeared excessively liberal, and to attack those who challenged police authority. Donner's controlled indignation is relatively restrained, and he relies on the power of chilling examples of law enforcement abuses to convey the message that political surveillance had far less to do with maintaining social stability than in protecting the interests of a dominant class on one hand and enhancing the careers of cynical politicians or police officials on the other. Lest his readers be left with the impression that the subversion of Constitutionally protected rights of political expression by the state was simply an anomaly occuring only in a few large cities, Donner includes a chapter on "second tier" cities, including Detroit, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. The pattern of abusive surveillance duplicates the larger cities, suggesting that excesses were the norm, not the exception. Donner's work would be valuable if it were only a history of official abuse in our nation's recent past. But, his work is much more than simply a chronicle. Although most agencies have at least attempted to curtail the most serious forms of abuse--albeit only when forced to as the result of public outrage or legal action--there is no evidence that the surveillance has stopped. The FBI's monitoring of of political organizations such as CISPES or the Secret Service's creation of a "sting" computer bulletin board system in a way that contradicts the "official" explanation of it, are just two recent examples that challenge claims that surveillance is under control. Computer technology creates a new danger for those concerned with surveillance. Law enforcement now has the technological means to monitor activities and process data infinitely more comprehensively, quickly, and surreptitiously than a decade ago. Donner's work reminds us that an open society can in no way tolerate threats to our liberty >from those entrusted to protect it. Just as I completed writing the above review, I noticed the following news article: "Killing Columnist Plotted, Liddy Says" (Chicago Tribune, (June 13, 1991: Sect. 1, p. 2): New York (AP)--In their first face-to-face meeting, G. Gordon Liddy, mastermind of the bungled Watergate burglary, told columnist Jack Anderson that the president's men vetoed plans to silence the newsman. "The rationale was to come up with a method of silencing you through killing you," Liddy tells Anderson on "The Real Story," a news show to be shown Thursday night on cable TV's CNBC. With not a hint of irony, the story continues that the White House thought such a sanction was too severe. Rumors of this have been floating around for awhile, but it's the first time, to my knowledge, a participant has made a public comment, but there's something so postmodernly absurd about talking about it F2F on national TV in the same way that the galloping gourmet would trade recipes with Julia. Marx's and Donner's cynicism in and distrust of gov't seens terribly understated if we can so serenely turn a potential gov't murder plot into TV fare. Given the government's actions in Operation Sun Devil and other abuse of existing law enforcement procedures, concern for protections of rights in cyberspace seem crucial. ******************************************************************** >> END OF THIS FILE << ***************************************************************************