FORA.tv - Video Program of the Week

Shane Harris, a reporter for National Journal, talks about The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State. Harris charts the rise of America's surveillance state over the past 25 years and highlights a dangerous paradox: he argues the government's strategy has made it harder to catch terrorists and easier to spy on civilians. In 1983, Admiral John Poindexter, President Reagan’s National Security Advisor, realized that the U.S. might have prevented the terrorist massacre of 241 Marines in Beirut, if intelligence agencies could have analyzed in real time the data they had on the attackers. Poindexter poured technical know-how and government funds into his dream–a system that would sift reams of information for signs of terrorist activity. Decades later, that elusive dream still captivates Washington. After 9/11, Poindexter returned to government with a controversial program, called Total Information Awareness, to detect the next attack. Today it has evolved into a secretly funded operation that can gather a trove of personal information on every American and millions of others worldwide. Despite billions of dollars spent on this quest since the Reagan era, we still can’t discern future threats in the vast data cloud that surrounds us all. But the government can now spy on its citizens with an ease that was impossible-and illegal-just a few years ago. Drawing on unprecedented access to the people who pioneered this high-tech spycraft, Harris shows how it has moved from the province of right-wing technocrats into the mainstream, becoming a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s war on terror.