Snitch Culture: How Citizens Are Turned Into the Eyes and Ears of the State

Snitch Culture: How Citizens are Turned into the Eyes and Ears of the State, Jim Redden, Feral House, 2000

America is being turned into a 24-hour surveillance state, much more extensively than anything dreamed up by Joseph Goebbels or George Orwell. This book gives all the gory details.

Despite the fact that crime in America is at a 30-year low, minorities are earning more than ever before, and schools have never been safer, most people live in fear, a fear created by politicians and law enforcement officials to justify spying on fellow citizens, literally from cradle to grave.

In elementary school, students are encouraged to squeal on their classmates; some schools even pay for information. Students with "anti-social tendencies" are reported; what was normal schoolyard behavior now results in suspensions and expulsions ("zero tolerance"). In college, politically active professors are monitored by those who oppose them. Campus organizations are infiltrated, looking for demonstrations or controversial speakers. In the workplace, it gets worse for the average person. Internet use is monitored, spies report on employee discontent and background checks are commonplace. Neighbors and family members wait for the smallest sign of "unconventional" behavior, then immediately call the authorities.

This book doesn't stop there. Hundreds of grass-roots and public interest groups have been spied on for many years; not by the government or the police (though they are very active in the spying field), but by the Anti-Defamation league and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Today, a tip from a snitch leads to a military-style assault on a person's house, with machine guns armed and ready, shooting anyone who moves. Whether or not the police find whatever the snitch said was in the house (usually drugs) is immaterial. If the person in the house survives the assault, then they have todeal with the seizure of their property by the police under asset forfeiture laws. One of the newest targets of police and government surveillance is the growing anti-globalization movement. The mass media is an enthusiastic partner in whipping up public fear of Them (blacks, muslims, anarchists, etc).

This book is very spooky and extremely highly recommended.