Broadcast: Events
Vial, Needle, Burner, Tap: An Electronic History of the U.S. War on Drugs
This lecture explores how the wiretap emerged as a privileged law enforcement tool in the United States government's so-called War on Drugs.
Ranging from the earliest narcotics wiretaps in the 1970s to the passage of the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act--a law that required global telecom companies to build surveillance friendly networks--I trace the influence of the drug war's racial politics on the normalization of electronic surveillance in complex criminal investigations.