January 05, 2005 | Pay Cash for This Book

Star Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow, Jr. has just published a stunning inside account of the growth of a surveillance-industrial complex since the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington D.C. in 2001.

The book called No Place to Hide is exquisitely reported, with back story, detail, inside access and carefully considered, but not wishy-washy, judgments.

I reviewed the book for Wired News today, but I'm afraid my review does not do the book justice.

It's the story of how a nationwide obsession with preventing another terrorist attack in the United States has drawn together companies that used to make millions selling targeted lists to retailers, high-powered former government officials turned lobbyists, cutting-edge technologists and a national security apparatus hungry for new tools.

To tell the story, O'Harrow mines his high-level government contacts to produce the first behind-the-scenes look at the nation's most known and unknown anti-terrorism programs.

No Place to Hide opens with an intimate account of the Patriot Act's birth, starting with the law's architect Viet Dinh's breakfast on Sept. 11 and leading to the backroom Patriot Act infighting between civil liberties-minded Sen. Pat Leahy and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

O'Harrow then walks the reader through the way little-known data aggregators manipulate the public and hide the true extent of their record gathering and consumer profiling, and how the highest levels of government got involved in the development of a data-mining program developed by a known drug smuggler and likely Iran-Contra operator.

[...]

There is no J. Edgar Hoover in O'Harrow's book, no figure intent on keeping tabs on every anti-war protester using the latest technology.

The figures in No Place to Hide, including Poindexter, are reasonable and human people, wary of the power of their technology, but mostly convinced that their efforts are in the country's best interest.

Yet, O'Harrow clearly recognizes there is much to fear in a world where FBI agents use grand jury subpoenas and Patriot Act powers to cull millions of records from a major city's businesses for an ad-hoc data-mining project on the basis of increased "chatter," as happened in Las Vegas in the winter of 2003.

It's not an all encompassing history of CAPPS II or TIA or the Patriot Act, but its an amazing look into the world of private data sharing and mining companies such as Acxiom and LexisNexis, government bureaucrats in awe of the power of new technologies, and the promises and inevitable pitfalls of a world of surveillance.

The book includes a history of the MATRIX program, an interview with TIA's father John Poindexter and a scathing look at Choicepoint and Acxiom.

I cover this stuff, and yet the book shocked and surprised me.

And even better, O'Harrow writes with flair and with a journalist's knack for explaining technology simply and then following on with all the relevant details.

Let the fools have their Hentof.

Make mine O'Harrow.

Posted by Ryan Singel at January 5, 2005 11:47 AM

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» Small Bits of Chaos from Emergent Chaos
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