One Nation Under Surveillance: A New Social Contract to Defend Freedom Without Sacrificing Liberty - Hardcover

One Nation Under Surveillance is a valuable contribution to this whole area of study, and is highly recommended for both graduatelevel and upper-level undergraduate courses covering National Security, Intelligence, and Privacy Law. (William Greene, International Journal of Constitutional Law)

One Nation Under Surveillance is rich in theory and crafted with a scholarly eye. Chesterman concisely surveys the political history and jurisprudential treatment of intelligence activities, before providing an engaging comparative perspective on the flawed approaches pursued by the United States, United Kingdom and United Nations in recent times. (Alexis Kalagas, The Global Journal)

This is a unique work that will make for a thought-provoking addition to the reading list of any student doing political theory or international relations theory. It will be of particular interest to those students looking for a new theoretical perspective on civil rights and the Big Brother state in the post 9/11 era. (eInternational Relations)

a timely examination of the theory and practice of governmental surveillance, with particular focus on the Anglophone democracies and the United Nations. One Nation Under Surveillance is a cogent contribution to the growing body of post-9/11 literature examining contemporary political developments in tension with the fundamental values of political liberalism, in this case particularly the right to privacy and due process of lawit is a welcome addition to any library and will prove to be a valuable resource for students and researchers in the area. And, it is to be hoped, for our policymakers and 'deciders' (Jason G. Allen, Journal of Law and Information Science)

I recommend this book to everybody interested in private civil libertiess (London Letter)

Chesterman's book provides a selective field guide to some of the best that has been said about intelligence and national security strained through the author's experience and legal knowledge ... a fine teaching device and is, as book blurbs say, "highly recommended". (Gary T. Marx, Times Higher Education Supplement)

In One Nation Under Surveillance, Simon Chesterman, a law professor at the National University of Singapore and New York University, maintains that privacy is already a dead letter, and proposes that we concentrate instead on regulating the governments use of the information it gathers, rather than futilely seeking to control surveillance itself. He argues convincingly that the specter of catastrophic terrorist attacks creates extraordinary pressure for intrusive monitoring; that technological advances have made the collection and analysis of vast amounts of previously private information entirely feasible; and that in a culture transformed by social media, in which citizens are increasingly willing to broadcast their innermost thoughts and acts, privacy may already be as outmoded as chivalry. (David Cole, New York Review of Books)

This book squarely faces the taboo subject of domestic privacy in an era of Islamist terrorism. Our enemies are not nation-states, so the targets of the intelligence services seeking to pre-empt terrorist attacks must be individuals. The casualty will be individual privacy. People will struggle against heightened surveillance, Chesterman notes, but the war will be lost. A must-read for anyone interested in staying current about the privacy implications of the war on terror. (Frederick P. Hitz, former Inspector General, CIA)

This is an important book, breaking new ground in the sweep of its analysis, its analytical insights, and the policy implications it draws out. It shows just how often foreign and domestic intelligence gathering in the major democracies has been insensitive to public accountability, legality, and its consequences for individuals, to the detriment of both liberty and security and how this can and must change. Simon Chesterman writes, as always, with compelling clarity and authority. (Gareth Evans, President Emeritus of the International Crisis Group and former Foreign Minister of Australia)

Simon Chesterman offers a clear, thoughtful, and incisive analysis of the long-standing tension between civil liberties, on the one hand, and security against threats to the polity, on the other hand. He takes a new tact on this old dilemma by probing into the question of what governments actually do with all the information they gather on their citizens. This is an interesting and provocative book. (Loch K. Johnson, University of Georgia)

What limits, if any, should be placed on a government's efforts to spy on its citizens in the name of national security? Spying on foreigners has long been regarded as an unseemly but necessary enterprise. Spying on one's own citizens in a democracy, by contrast, has historically been subject to various forms of legal and political restraint. For most of the twentieth century these regimes were kept distinct. That position is no longer tenable. Modern threats do not respect national borders. Changes in technology make it impractical to distinguish between 'foreign' and 'local' communications. And our culture is progressively reducing the sphere of activity that citizens can reasonably expect to be kept from government eyes. The main casualty of this transformed environment will be privacy. Recent battles over privacy have been dominated by fights over warrantless electronic surveillance or CCTV; the coming years will see debates over DNA databases, data mining, and biometric identification. There will be protests and lawsuits, editorials and elections resisting these attacks on privacy. Those battles are worthy. But the war will be lost. Modern threats increasingly require that governments collect such information, governments are increasingly able to collect it, and citizens increasingly accept that they will collect it. One Nation Under Surveillance proposes a move away from questions of whether governments should collect information and onto more problematic and relevant questions concerning its use. By reframing the relationship between privacy and security in the language of a social contract, mediated by a citizenry who are active participants rather than passive targets, this book offers a framework to defend freedom without sacrificing liberty.