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Shane Harris's "The Watchers" is neither uniformly interesting or boring. It is both.
Harris's sub-title "The rise of America's surveillance state" implies that the reader will be shown that the nation citizens are somehow having their Constitutional rights eroded. Harris is never able to make this case conclusively and, in the final pages, is compelled to admit that the courts don't support his view or that of so-called privacy advocates.
Potential readers are advised to decide before opening the cover what their stance is on individual "privacy" versus national security. If, like me, you believe that most people do nothing in their lives worthy of anyone paying attention to them and that the notion of privacy in the 21st Century is a ridiculous concept, you can save time and pass this book by unless you are interested in what amounts to a biography of Admiral John Poindexter. Poindexter is a controversial character made infamous by left-wing attacks on him.
On the other hand, if you believe that you're worth being snooped on by government and that you have some "right to privacy" to records that are readily available, you'll love the false premise of this book that you are being spied upon by government.
Essentially the book is about Poindexter and his advocacy of large scale data mining to pinpoint potential terrorists before they can carry out their dastardly deeds. You can see how well this works by the fact that a male was able to board an commercial aircraft with nearly 300 people on board with explosives in his underwear. This particular terrorist had been reported by his father to the American embassy, violated numerous behavioral norms established by airline security experts such as buying a one-way ticket with cash and boarding a trans-continental flight with no luggage.
The data mining program has been fiercely opposed by left-wing agitators and a host of "privacy rights" advocates - yet it managed to hang on in one form or another for more than two decades.
It is, frankly, a boring story and Harris cannot make it interesting. Harris is clearly not familiar with the technology and it shows, at least to a technologically knowledgeable reader. To his credit, Harris never sinks to a tabloid level in trying to generate excitement - if not hysteria - over the scope and nature of the various data mining programs. Yes, the programs relied on commercial databases, such as bank and phone records, seeking out patterns of suspicious activity. There are people who go crazy thinking the government might be accessing their bank records en masse with those of millions of other people. The reality is that on such a massive scale, only unusual activity would gain any scrutiny - which could well occur anyway through an observant employee. Make numerous withdrawals of cash in a few weeks, each just under the $10,000 mandatory reporting level and you are going to attract attention.
The reality is that the concept of privacy in a digital age is ludicrous. No one cares about your sex life, unless it violates the law. Your banking records are under constant scrutiny by the banks themselves and are easily obtainable by law enforcement agencies, even without your knowledge, and have been for decades. If people really understood just how widely accessible their medical records are, they would flip out, but that has also been the case for decades. Practically every bit of information about you is available one way or another. Getting it might not be legal, but it can be had.
The sub-text is that the government's data mining plans weren't legal and that individual "privacy" was threatened. In the last few pages, Harris admits that the court found that what the government was doing was indeed within the law. The informed reader would know that going in and within the first few pages would be asking what Harris was complaining about.
Harris tries unsuccessfully to guide his narrative so as to not offend persons of certain political persuasion. For example, in discussing the disclosure of CIA detention centers in certain European countries, Harris focuses on Adm. Poindexter and a CIA employee who was ultimately fired for her alleged role in the disclosure. He does not discuss the disclosure itself, which compromised national security and quite probably violated the law. Nor does he speak of the role played in the disclosure by left-wing groups with their own agendas. And Harris doesn't get into a discussion how political operatives putting their political ideology before national needs are destroying the CIA and other government agencies.
Instead Harris labors on, politely trying to convince the reader of horrendous plots to gather huge amounts of data relating to the ordinary activities of ordinary people in order to pick out the one in several hundred thousand who might be involved in terrorist plots. The result is a so-so biography of John Poindexter, a very narrow overview of a particular aspect of the nation's intelligence efforts, the not at all surprising conclusions that the intelligence agencies aren't very intelligent and that the concept of personal privacy is all kind of silly in the 21st Century.
Certainly "The Watchers" is not the worst book I've ever read, but it isn't terribly interesting or informative.
Jerry
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