The Surveillance Machine, Pt 1: How We Got Here

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The tools of high tech surveillance are increasingly all around us: security cameras in public and embedded in doorbells, location data on your phone, online ad tracking. A lot of this has become normalized, utterly mundane. But in the year since nationwide student protests for Palestine, heightened scrutiny of and retaliation against activists in the U.S. have raised new concerns. Government surveillance, particularly on social media, has grown exponentially since the massive Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, but the precedent in this country stretches much further back. In this episode, Columbia University student organizer Jalsa Drinkard shares her experience protecting other students from invasive surveillance and targeting, and Don Bell, policy counsel for The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight, walks us through the long history of government surveillance in American protest movements, and why today’s moment feels different.

Guests:

Jalsa Drinkard, Columbia University student and an organizer for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, CUAD

Don Bell, policy counsel at The Constitution Project at The Project On Government Oversight, POGO

Further reading:

Protest Under a Surveillance State Microscope - Don Bell, Project On Government Oversight

Surveillance & Policing Bodily Autonomy - Don Bell, Project On Government Oversight

‘Discredit, disrupt, and destroy’: FBI records acquired by the Library reveal violent surveillance of Black leaders, civil rights organizations - Virgie Hoban, Berkeley Library

How Watergate Changed America’s Intelligence Laws - Barbara Maranzani, History

‘Panic made us vulnerable’: how 9/11 made the US surveillance state – and the Americans who fought back - Ed Pilkington, The Guardian

Read the transcript here

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Credits:

This episode was reported and hosted by Morgan Sung. Our Producer is Maya Cueva. This episode was edited by Alan Montecillo. Chris Egusa is our Senior Editor. Additional editing by Jen Chien. Sound design by Maya Cueva. Original music by Chris Egusa, with additional music from APM. Mixing and mastering by Brendan Willard and Katherine Monahan. Audience engagement support from Maha Sanad and Alana Walker. Katie Sprenger is our Podcast Operations Manager. Holly Kernan is our Chief Content Officer.

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