The Rise of the Computer State ― The Threat to Our Freedoms, Our Ethics and Our Democratic Process

The Rise of the Computer State is a comprehensive examination of the ways that computers and massive databases are enabling the nation’s corporations and law enforcement agencies to steadily erode our privacy and manipulate and control the American people. This book was written in 1983 as a warning. Today it is a history. Most of its grim scenarios are now part of everyday life. The remedy proposed here, greater public oversight of industry and government, has not occurred, but a better one has not yet been found. While many individuals have willingly surrendered much of their privacy and all of us have lost some of it, the right to keep what remains is still worth protecting.

David Burnham is one of America’s foremost investigative reporters. In more than 18 years withThe New York Times he uncovered abuses, corruption and wrongdoing at powerful government agencies including the Internal Revenue Service, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the FBI and the New York Police Department. His reporting work with Frank Serpico and David Durk led to the formation of the Knapp Commission and reform of the New York Police Department. Karen Silkwood was driving to meet with Burnham on abuses at the Kerr-McGee nuclear power plant in Oklahoma when she was killed under mysterious circumstances. For 25 years Burnham has been co-director of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), a nonprofit organization affiliated with Syracuse University.