The Naked Society. Vance Packard
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Society of Former Agents is considerably more than a fraternal organization. It is also a clearinghouse for information about jobs available, and it offers a directory of trained investigators available for special projects in just about every corner of the U.S.A. In the geographic part of the directory there is an asterisk after the name of each member who has indicated he is “available for work.”
In Indiana, for example, about half of all the society’s members are “available. “They are located in seventeen towns and cities. In New Jersey the “available” members can be reached in forty-six towns and cities. And in California there are ex-agents “available for work” in seventy-three towns and cities.
One of the more interesting entrants among the ex-agents who indicated in the 1961 directory that they were “available for work” was a police captain in Knoxville, Tennessee!
A random sampling of the 1961 directory suggests that several hundred of the former special agents are in charge of handling personnel at business corporations as either security officers, personnel directors, labor-relations directors, or industrial-relations directors. The Ford Motor Company, incidentally, had 39 ex-FBI special agents on its payroll in some capacity.
A check of all the society members who left the FBI in the years 1930, 1940, 1950, and 1960 reveals that 35 per cent of those who now have active careers are in jobs involving investigation, policing, or security enforcement.
Some of the former FBI men have banded together to form their own nationwide organizations for investigative assignments. One is Fidelifacts, a loose network of more than 200 former FBI agents. They operate on a franchise basis and either pay each other for investigations or have an exchange arrangement. (The name was recently changed from Fidelifax to Fidelifacts because people seemed to assume that Fidelifax should be a photocopying company.)
Fidelifacts has full-time offices in such places as Boston, Stamford, Albany, Baltimore, Richmond, Atlanta, New York City, Detroit, Las Vegas, Miami, Chicago, Charlotte, Garden City, Phoenix, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Billings, Akron, Houston, Syracuse, and Minneapolis. It has in addition many part-time “resident reporters” operating in areas not yet large enough to support an office.
An outfit that has benefited spectacularly from the romance of the FBI label is the Wakenhut Corporation, headquartered in Coral Gables, Florida. It is such a fast-burning business rocket that it is still something of a mystery to a number of people in the investigative field. In less than a decade it has grown from four private eyes into the fourth largest investigative and security organization in the nation, with a staff of 3500, complete with a lie-detector division.
All its announcements, and all public reports about it that I have seen, have stressed the fact that it was founded by ex-special agents of the FBI and is led by ex-FBI men. This is correct. George Wackenhut, a husky, jut-jawed, energetic man with a bone-crushing handshake, founded the organization in 1954 immediately after serving a three-year hitch with the FBI. Three of his colleagues also were former agents. And several of his top executives today are ex-FBI agents. But the client signing a large contract with Wackenhut Corporation in the expectation that he would be getting the exclusive services of ex-FBI men would be disappointed. In 1961 less than one per cent of its total staff were listed as ex-FBI men in the membership directory of the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI.
The business editor of the Miami Herald, in commenting on the phenomenal national growth of this local firm, mentioned that its FBI leadership gives it an advantage in signing up new industrial clients. He said Wackenhut has this special advantage in negotiating with industrial security officers “because a high percentage of industrial security officers were once with the FBI”!
5. The Electronic Eyes, Ears, and Memories
In the novel George Orwell wrote about the year 1984 he envisioned that the advances of electronics had enabled his fictional totalitarian leader to install a telescreen in each living space of the realm. In this way the tyrant could maintain virtually total visual and audio surveillance when he chose. As Orwell put it: “You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”
If Mr. Orwell were writing his book today rather than in the 1940s his details would surely be more horrifying. Today there are cameras that can indeed see in the dark. There are banks of giant memory machines that conceivably could recall in a few seconds every pertinent action—including failures, embarrassments, or possibly incriminating acts—from the lifetime of each citizen. And brain research has progressed to the point where it is all too readily believable that a Big Brother could implant an electrode in the brain of each baby at birth and thereafter maintain by remote control a certain degree of restraint over the individual’s moods and behavior, at least until his personality had suitably jelled.
Fortunately for the human race, a good many people are becoming apprehensive about the wonders bestowed by electronic research. Fortunately also the expense of most of the devices prohibits their use against whole populations (though the prices are coming down), so the present uses are mostly selective. Nevertheless in the course of a year literally millions of Americans are watched or overheard electronically without their awareness at some time during any single week.
Let us pause for a moment to brief ourselves on the state of the “art” of electronic surveillance as of 1964. In subsequent chapters we shall see how the devices that have been developed are applied in many situations in ways that tend to annihilate the privacy and dignity of the citizens under scrutiny.
Each year several thousand TV cameras are sold to industry, and such giants as General Precision, General Electric, and RCA are among the companies selling them. Seattle’s classified phone directory lists fourteen local companies offering to sell or install closed-circuit TV. Many of the TV cameras used in industry are for such prosaic purposes as watching instrument panels or furnace operations; others are for watching people.
In some instances the people involved know about the people-watching, as at the gates of an IBM plant doing research work in Endicott, New York. In others it is done secretly.
Mr. Max Kanter—president of ITV in New York, which rents or sells closed-circuit installations—explained that if you wish to conceal the cameras even the lens need not show. He said: “If there is screening material or mesh to conceal the camera, and if it is focused at some point beyond, the lens can look right through the screening material.” (His charge for renting basic equipment for one week: about $200.)
The makers of TV cameras for surveillance have not only learned to miniaturize them to a thickness of only about four inches, but they have learned that by shooting into a mirror they can install the cameras vertically in a wall that has a four-inch air space. The fact that the FBI uses closed-circuit TV in some of its surveillance work came out in the trial of a Navy yeoman suspected of spying.
Hidden still cameras are also in wide use for recording the activities of people. A company called Cameras for Industry has been aggressive in selling plants, stores, banks, etc., on “Automatic Photo Systems” that can now be rented for “pennies a day.” The cameras operate silently, can take thousands of pictures in a single loading, and, it is explained, they can either be used openly or be concealed. The camera can be triggered by a photoelectric eye. Or if a clerk is handing you a document he can first insert it in a number-stamping machine, and the act of stamping will trigger a hidden camera beamed at you.
Then there are the tiny cameras used by investigators or others seeking evidence. Some are built into cigarette lighters. As the owner lights his cigarette, his thumb action simultaneously triggers the camera.
The impetus for the development of many of these remarkable surveillance devices came from defense and space research and from efforts to keep up with the Russians in this area. Advances in infrared photography (in the dark) resulted largely from research for aerial reconnaissance, as did automatic tripping devices for cameras. Many early developments in closed-circuit TV were for use in surveillance of machines and dials as well as people at missile launching complexes. Transistors made possible miniature transmitters for use in satellites where every ounce counts.