Spying on Democracy

Government Surveillance, Corporate Power and Public Resistance

By: Heidi Boghosian

Narrated by: Fred Sanders

Until the watershed leak of top-secret documents by Edward Snowden to The Guardian (UK) and The Washington Post, most Americans did not realize the extent to which our government is actively acquiring personal information from telecommunications companies and other corporations. As made startlingly clear, the National Security Agency (NSA) has collected information on every phone call Americans have made over the past seven years. In that same time, the NSA and the FBI have gained the ability to access emails, photos, audio and video chats, and additional content from Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Microsoft, YouTube, Skype, Apple, and others, allegedly in order to track foreign targets.

In Spying on Democracy, National Lawyers Guild executive director Heidi Boghosian documents the disturbing increase in surveillance of ordinary citizens and the danger it poses to our privacy, our civil liberties, and the future of democracy itself. Boghosian reveals how technology is being used to categorize and monitor people based on their associations, their movements, their purchases, and their perceived political beliefs. She shows how corporations and government intelligence agencies mine data from sources as diverse as surveillance cameras, unmanned drones, iris scans, and medical records while combing websites, email, phone records, and social media for resale to third parties, including US intelligence agencies.

The ACLU's Michael German says of the examples shown in Boghosian's book, "This unrestrained spying is inevitably used to suppress the most essential tools of democracy: the press, political activists, civil rights advocates, and conscientious insiders who blow the whistle on corporate malfeasance and government abuse." Boghosian adds, "If the trend is permitted to continue, we will soon live in a society where nothing is confidential, no information is really secure, and our civil liberties are under constant surveillance and control."

Spying on Democracy is a timely, invaluable, and accessible primer for anyone concerned with protecting privacy, freedom, and the US Constitution.

Heidi Boghosian is the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild. She cohosts Law and Disorder, broadcast on WBAI-FM in New York and over 40 stations nationwide. She is based in New York City.

©2013 Heidi Boghosian (P)2016 Audible, Inc.

Critic reviews

"Everyone of us is under the omniscient magnifying glass of the government and corporate spies.... How do we respond to this smog of surveillance? Start by reading Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance by Heidi Boghosian." (Bill Moyers)

"With ex-CIA staffer Edward Snowden's leaks about National Security Agency surveillance in the headlines, Heidi Boghosian's Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance feels especially timely. Boghosian reveals how the government acquires information from telecommunications companies and other organizations to create databases about 'persons of interest.'" (Publishers Weekly)

"Heidi Boghosian's Spying on Democracy is the answer to the question, 'if you're not doing anything wrong, why should you care if someone's watching you?'" (Michael German, senior policy counsel, ACLU, and former FBI agent)

Good, but a bit one-sided

Perhaps this topic needs to be a bit one-sided to get the desired effect, but I thought it a bit unbalanced in its viewpoints. As a small example, it criticizes collaboration between the FBI and NY businesses in preparing for public Occupy demonstrations. I don't think this is objectionable considering the impact the demonstrations might have, at least at the physical location where the demonstrations would be occurring. The book portrays this as insidious. Perhaps there was something nefarious there, but it doesn't mean there absolutely was.

Outstanding background and depth.

A solid perspective detailing depth of American government & corporate surveillance system with outstanding historical grounding and contemporary breadth.

EXCELLENT !

If you have any interest what so ever in privacy and civil liberties you will.find this book.a great read/listen !

Prepare to Get Paranoid

Prepare to get paranoid: a directory of ways Americans can be and are spied upon. Even allowing for the threat of terrorism, it's a whomp upside the head to have it laid out like this. Story after story of innocents and dissenters being surveilled and accused. Is this what democracy looks like?

Everyone's a suspect, and we've seen what the government has considered worth watching, labor unions, and radical thinkers. Luckily, Heidi Boghosian didn't leave me with my hands thrown up, but with a sense that there are solutions to the spy state. We just need to be brave enough to make them happen.

Narrator Fred Sanders brings the gravitas this book needs.

Solid

Goodnovercirw of a broad range of gov surveillance. A bit dated now. Absolutely horrible narration.