Surveillance, Pei argues, should be understood as a form of “preventive repression,” because fear of being found out can stop protests before they start. It’s the most efficient method for solving the “coercive dilemma” that every dictatorship faces: “discerning just how much repression is the right amount to shut down opposition” without inspiring a popular uprising like the pro-democracy movements that led to the 2014 Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong.
By interviewing exiled dissidents and combing through local websites, vaguely worded state announcements and the occasional leak, Pei manages to piece together the intricate web of human relationships that make up China’s vast surveillance network. He reveals how local and state authorities target “key individuals” including Uyghur Muslims and members of the far-right religious organization Falun Gong, singling out roughly 1 percent of the population for special, targeted surveillance.
Sure, CCTVs help, as do centralized A.I.-powered facial recognition systems, but Pei scoffs at the idea that China’s dictatorship thrives because of technological innovations like the ones at the heart of the proposed “social credit system” that might one day assign every citizen what amounts to an obedience score that allocates their access to jobs, vacations, restaurants and transit.
Like Tau, Pei excels at description rather than prescription — his work reveals hidden systems of repression, but stops short of offering solutions. Both authors argue persuasively that gee-whiz headlines about spy tech are a red herring; surveillance is a function of public-private partnerships, not specific technologies. In China, these partnerships are widely publicized, and the names of targeted key individuals are often known to their communities. In the United States, citizens rarely know when they are being targeted, and the government siphons data from tech companies in secret.
But the result is the same. Mass surveillance has become the norm, and that makes us vulnerable to targeted scapegoating and curtailed freedoms, whether we realize it or not. Data brokers in America are the equivalent of prying neighbors, peeking through your windows, hoping to get some intelligence that they can sell to the police. You know you’re being watched, but the dark glass of your phone’s touch-screen obscures the authorities who lurk just beyond it.
MEANS OF CONTROL: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State | By Byron Tau | Crown | 365 pp. | $32
THE SENTINEL STATE: Surveillance and the Survival of Dictatorship in China | By Minxin Pei | Harvard University Press | 321 pp. | $35
