Building Surveillance: Three Chapters in US History

Featuring Simone Browne, Assia Boundaoui, and Omar Farah, moderated by Lilly Irani.

This panel discussion invites three speakers to share important chapters in US surveillance history: analog surveillance in the early colonial era, FBI surveillance of Black and Muslim communities in the 1970s through 1990s, and NYPD and federal surveilance of Muslim communities after 9/11. The speakers will then weave the chapters together, showing the historical, tactical, and social connections between agencies, approaches, and philosophies and how surveillance undergirds the need for control and fear of the other in US society from its earliest days.