Spying on Americans, Before Computers

In the 1983-1984 academic year, a Purdue professor taught a special course entitled 1984. The purpose of the course was to evaluate the predictions made in the classic novel 1984 by George Orwell, a prophetic account of government repression and totalitarianism. Among the topics covered in the course were the Big Brother techniques of spying on its citizens. During the time of the novel, computers did not exist at today's level, so the techniques of spying were based on human-based surveillance. In the course 1984, the class read and discussed available literature on what was then known about government-led spying on citizens. Several members of the class could not believe the reports in the literature about the very large number of files reported to be held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, estimated at the time at 50 million. The class concluded that the sheer number of reported FBI files could not be based on real "enemies" but they had to be files developed on categories of persons in certain sensitive positions, like scientists, journalists, and maybe even teachers. The professor in the class told the students that he would try a real-life test by sending a request to the FBI requesting his file, and see what that produced.

A letter to the FBI was sent, and there was no response. The course was soon over and everyone had forgotten about the real-life "test" of who might be spying on Americans.. Then on March 13, 1984, the professor received a letter from the FBI stating that they had a "main file" on him which consisted of 20 pages, of which 15 pages were either "blacked out" or withheld under provisions of the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act of 1974. Material from the file that was available for view included newspaper articles about the professor's research activities and campus activities. The professor filed several appeals for additional information, and discovered nearly a year later that his file had expanded to 32 pages and that he was now suspected of being a threat to U.S. security and of having ties to the Communist Party.

The recent revelations about the computer-internet driven efforts by the National Security Agency to obtain records on all Americans is just another example of government spying on their citizens. It is likely that all governments spy on their citizens, but they may do so with different degrees  of subtlety and technological sophistication. The only protection that citizens have against the more or less repressive activities of government is the courage of whistleblowers, a vigilant press, and an engaged citizenry that says "no more."