Surveillance Abuse

Surveillance and other forms of secret intelligence gathering and covert action have a long and colorful history. While popular culture celebrates the adventures of James Bond and the clever technical skill portrayed in Mission Impossible, civil libertarians worry about privacy rights and the boundaries between legitimate law enforcement techniques and government abuse of power.

Law enforcement use of covert surveillance and informers was pioneered in sixteenth-century Europe. Critics of surveillance abuse and police excesses emerged alongside the themes of the Enlightenment, with its concern for individual liberties. By the time of the Civil War in the United States, most large cities had uniformed police and detectives who relied on information [Page 1606]obtained covertly, sometimes through informers in the criminal subculture.

In the United States, sophisticated undercover techniques were often pioneered by private industrial security firms such as the Pinkerton and Burns agencies. For many years, the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover used undercover surveillance to gather political intelligence on dissident groups, but it discouraged agents from using similar techniques against common crime, including vice and narcotics. This changed in the early 1970s:

Between 1973 and 1983, the number of undercover FBI investigations rose from roughly 30 to almost 400 where it stayed for a decade. Well-publicized “sting” operations became a regular feature on television news. Agents moved from buying contraband to selling it, a subtle distinction that nonetheless shifted the transaction toward entrapment. Public figures not only were investigated when evidence of corruption was alleged but were put in artificial situations where they were encouraged by agents and informers to take bribes or use drugs while being videotaped. The emphasis shifted from investigating individual criminal acts to putting individuals from targeted groups under surveillance and waiting for them to engage in criminal behavior (or encouraging them to do so).