"A chillingly inclusive look at the history of surveillance in the United States. From the crude handwritten tracking records of African American slaves in the antebellum South to the uses of early photography to today's insatiable computers, the author shows surveillance starting as a trickle and becoming a stream that has grown into a raging river."
—Los Angeles Times

Parenti has created a series of historical vignettes, from the use of slave passes to control African Americans in the Old South to the rise of fingerprinting to keep track of criminals to the use of identification cards to enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act. The book, though, is at its best when dealing with the steady encroachments of modern technology on individual privacy. Surveillance cameras monitor us in our schools, workplaces, parks and highways. With ATMs, credit cards, Internet 'cookies,' cell phones, global positioning systems and EZ-Pass, modern Americans leave electronic footprints wherever they go."
—The Washington Post Book World

"As Parenti ably describes it, the history of surveillance moves from slaves to immigrants to political radicals to criminals to the poor to workers, and then to anyone with a credit card and a computer…A provocative book that is a must-read for those interested in privacy rights and the present war on terrorism."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"The Soft Cage chronicles the history of surveillance to support
his point…Truly spooky."
—The Seattle Times

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