The Naked Society. Vance Packard

in Facts About Us”—the intrusive collection and sale of mailing lists about what we consume, for instance—or that, “Each month more and more information about individuals is being stored away in some giant memory machine.” The “progressive” candidate Barack Obama built his 2012 reelection campaign collecting just such “micro-targeting” information about voters, to no objection I can find—just celebration of its technological glories.³⁴ Packard was taken aback that, in a survey of 400 companies that check on the health of executives (an intrusion he found offensive in itself) “only one firm in ten permitted the executive to go to a doctor or clinic of his own choice.” (No HMOs in 1964.) Other offenses then that don’t register now: the 35 percent of former FBI agents working in investigation or security, spying on school bathrooms to avoid vandalism, the biographical X-rays people have to submit to for federal employment, “Washington’s Version of ‘This Is Your Life’”—still in effect: a friend of mine, for a minor job with the Parks Service had to submit a list of five people who had known him for at least ten years, complete with phone numbers. “I almost,” he told me, “had to make people up.”

      When people learned about this kind of stuff in 1964, they began indignant. Though, in fact, not nearly enough for the New York Times Book Review’s critic who found “a woefully common lack of indignation on the part of the bugged.” He also quoted the American Civil Liberties Union: “A hallmark of totalitarian societies is that the people are apprehensive of being overheard or spied upon.”

      Well, hardly anyone is apprehensive now. I wonder: if a totalitarian society is one in which people are scared of their privacy being invaded, what do you call ours, in which no one seems much to care?

      —Rick Perlstein

      1. Matt Sledge, “NYPD Muslim Surveillance Report Details ‘Collateral Damage of Progarm,” Huffington Post, March 11, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/nypd-muslimsurveillance_n_2855303.html; “With CIA Help, NYPD Moves Covertly in Muslim Areas,” Associated Press, August 24, 2011, http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?section=news/local/new_york&id=8323847

      2. “The Swartz Suicide and the Sick Culture of the DOJ,” Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly, January 23, 2013, http://masslawyersweekly.com/2013/01/23/the-swartz-suicide-and-the-sick-culture-of-the-doj/

      3. John Celock and Arthur Delaney, “Drug Testing Bills Proliferate in State Legislatures,” Huffington Post, April 11, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/11/drug-testing-welfare_n_3063962.html

      4. Charlie Savage and Leslie Kaufman, “Phone Records of Journalists of the Associated Press Seized by U.S.,” New York Times, May 13, 2012

      5. Amy Chozick, “Bloomberg Admits to Terminal Snooping,” New York Times, May 13, 2013.

      6. Discounting Rights: Wal-Mart’s Violation of U.S. Workers’ Right to Freedom of Association (Human Rights Watch, 2007)

      7. “Vance Packard, 82, Challenger of Consumerism, Dies,” New York Times, December 13, 1996.

      8. Lewis Nichols, “Talk With Vance Packard,” New York Times, March 15, 1964.

      9. “Vance Packard, 82, Challenger of Consumerism, Dies,” New York Times, December 13, 1996.

      10. Julian Borger, “Dirty Rats Leave Gore a Subliminal Message,” The Guardian, September 12, 2000, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2000/sep/13/uselections2000.usa

      11. “Vance Packard, 82, Challenger of Consumerism, Dies,” New York Times, December 13, 1996.

      12. Rick Perlstein, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill & Wang, 2001), p. 209

      13. Ibid.

      14. John Brooks, “There’s Somebody Watching You: The Naked Society, by Vance Packard,” New York Times Book Review, March 15, 1964, p. 1.

      15. Daniel Horowitz, Vance Packard and American Social Criticism (Charlotte: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), p. 120

      16. Barry Goldwater, The Conscience of a Conservative (Shepardsville, KY: Victor Publishing, 1960), p. 11.

      17. Lewis Nichols, “Talk With Vance Packard,” New York Times, March 15, 1964.

      18. Lawrence Laurent, “Eavesdroppers Now Sophisticated Pests,” Washington Post, May 23, 1964; Associated Press, “LBJ Sets Up Committee for Lie Detector Study,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal, December 14, 1965.

      19. Wikpiedia, “Polygraph,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygraph

      20. Ann Murphy Paul, The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves (New York: Free Press, 2005), p. xiv, 157.

      21. Discredited: How Employment Credit Checks Keep Qualified Workers Out of a Job (New York: Demos, 2013).

      22. Mark Crawford, “Workplace Spying: How Far Can Companies Go,” BusinessWatch, nd, accessed May 10, 2013.

      23. Laura M. Sands, “Spying on Employees—Is It Ethical?,” “Your Eye on Security Alerts, Blogs, News, and Videos,” July 30, 2012, http://www.homesecuritystore.com/blog/2012/07/30/spying-on-employees-is-it-ethical/

      24. Erik Serhman, “No Facebook Privacy for Cheaters (Or Anyone Else),” CBS Money Watch, May 10, 2013, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57583881/no-facebook-privacy-for-cheaters-or-anyone-else/

      25. Received April 26, 2013.

      26. Taylor Branch, Pillar of Fire: America in the King Years 1963-65 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), 556-57.

      27. Murtaza Hussain, “Exile the Obama Way,” Aljazeera. com, February 5, 2013, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/02/201324165957645514.html.

      28. David K. Shipler, The Rights of the People: How Our Search for Safety Invades Our Liberties (New York: Knopf, 2011); Rights At Risk: The Limits of Liberty in Modern America (New York: Knopf, 2012).

      29. Email, May 13, 2013.

      30. Publishers Weekly, February 7, 2011.

      31. March 18, 1964 New York Times, Doubleday bookstore; Edmund Fuller, “The Bookshelf: A Pair of Indictments of Privacy-Invaders,” Wall Street Journal, March 26, 1964; Glendly Culligan, “Brothers of Assorted Sizes Are Kibitzing on Our Lives,” Washington Post, March 18, 1964; for Stewart Alsop see June 15, 1964 Edmonton Journal.

      32. Patrick Johnson, “After Atlanta Raid Tragedy, New Scrutiny of Police Tactics,” Christian Science Monitor, November 29, 2006; email May 11, 2013.

      33. Radley Balko, “No SWAT,” Slate, April 6, 2006, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2006/04/no_swat.html

      34. See, for instance, Alexis C. Madgrigal, “When the Nerds Go Marching In,” The Atlantic, November 16, 2012, http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/11/when-the-nerds-go-marchingin/265325/