AI And The Golden Age Of Surveillance
Security Boulevard, Thursday, October 16th, 2025
In the Cold War and McCarthy era, surveillance was a matter of craft, not computation. It took people, patience and paperwork. Agents had to physically follow a suspect through crowded streets, steam open letters, or plant microphones in hotel rooms.
When the government wanted a list of members of a political or civil rights organization, it had to raid the offices and rummage through the file cabinets.
Wiretaps required copper lines, warrants were often improvised, and the process was labor-intensive. 'Mail covers' - recording the outside of envelopes - were slow and manual. The FBI might subpoena library records to see if citizens were reading 'subversive' books or subpoena magazine subscription lists, but each act of surveillance was targeted, deliberate, and time-consuming. The very inefficiency of mid-century surveillance was what preserved liberty: Watching everyone was simply impossible.