Handbook of Surveillance Technologies (3rd Ed) - The Real Faces of ...

Handbook of Surveillance Technologies
Glavonoye Razvedyvatel’noye Upravlenye (GRU), Russia’s military intelligence agency, which
handled foreign intelligence and operates to this day. Rather than cooperating with each other,
however, there were fierce rivalries between internal and external security agencies, along with
frequent reorganizations. By the 1950s, the better-known Komitet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti
(KGB) had been formed.
4.c. The Rise of Technological Sensing and New Public Laws
Radio-Echo Detection
The only way to reach the New World in the 19th century was by ships. Sometimes they
collided with rocks or with other vessels. German inventor, Christian Hülsmeyer (1881–1957)
sought to improve marine navigation by bouncing radio waves off of objects and detecting the
returned signal. On 30 April 1904, he registered patent DRP #165546 for a Telemobiloskop
(far-moving scope)—a radio device to prevent marine collisions. This important innovation
was the forerunner of modern radio-ranging techniques—an early radar system.
The “Progressive Era”
Most of America was still wilderness. The northwest was barely settled, migrant shacks
dotted the Mississippi River, and Native Americans still followed traditional hunting practices
in forests and rivers along the Canadian border. Mechanical devices were uncommon. Most
surveillance involved the use of simple telescopes, or the bribing of loose-tongued, eavesdropping
telephone and telegraph operators. Community disturbances were handled by local law
enforcement agencies. But, with technology evolving, and the population steadily growing,
distance communications began to effect nationalism and the structure of the country.
By the early 1900s, the DoJ was using Secret Service agents (‘operatives’) to conduct
investigations. In 1905, the Department created the Bureau of Criminal Identification with a
central repository for fingerprint cards. Local law enforcement agencies began developing their
own fingerprint repositories, perhaps in part because the DoJ was using convicts to maintain
the federal print registry, a practice that was understandably controversial.
Attorney General Charles Bonaparte put political pressure on Congress to allow him to
control investigations under his jurisdiction and, on May 1908, a law was enacted preventing
the Department of Justice from using Secret Service agents.
Origins of the FBI
In 1908, during the latter part of Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency, a bureau of investigations
was established by Charles Bonaparte to investigate a variety of interstate, antitrust, copyright,
and land-fraud cases. Two years later when the Mann Act (“White Slave” act) was passed, bureau
responsibilities broadened to include criminals who might not have committed federal violations,
but who were evading state laws. After the outbreak of World War I, the Espionage Act and the
Selective Service Act were passed and bureau responsibilities again increased. In the course of a
decade, the bureau had grown from less than a dozen to over two hundred Special Agents. On
completion of their terms in 1909, both President Roosevelt and Bonaparte recommended that
the force of agents become a permanent part of the Department of Justice and General George
Wickersham officially named this force the Bureau of Investigation (BoI).
War and Post-War Surveillance
In 1917, during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, the United States entered World War I.
This spurred the deployment of surveillance technologies like never before. Submarine-spot-
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