The Rise of the Computer State

Burnham, David. The Rise of the Computer State: The Threat to Our Freedoms, Our Ethics[,] and Our Democratic Process. New York City: Random House/Scribner, 1983. "Foreword by Walter Cronkite."

Relatively early book — note year of publication — warning of real-world threats of surveillance more subtle than George Orwell had posited for the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

From "About the author" on Amazon.com: Burnham's three "books investigate the most powerful forces in the federal government, starting in 1983 with The Rise of the Computer State. Long before the revelations of Edward Snowden, the book included a chapter on the National Security Agency, which Burnham described as 'the ultimate computer bureaucracy'" [1].

From review by Caroline O'Donovan, posted 8 August 2013, "Summer Reading 2013," NiemanLab:

The book speaks to the history of government data and the combination of fear and anger many Americans feel when confronted with how much our government knows about us. Based on his foreword to the book, excerpted below, one can only imagine how Walter Cronkite would have responded to recent discoveries about how much digital information about us the NSA has.

In a New York Times review of the book,[2] John Brooks writes: “The Government’s huge and little-known National Security Agency collects, through electronic espionage, so much raw data that it sometimes needs to destroy tens of thousands of pounds of excess secret paper a day. How much, then, do they keep a day?” He also points to the CIA, FBI, IRS, and private companies including AT&T and “computerized credit companies” as dangers highlighted by Burnham’s book.[3]

RDE, finishing, 21Aug22