This book explores the conundrum that political fortune is dependent both on social order and big, constitutive crime. An act of outrageous harm depends on rules and protocols of crime scene discovery and forensic recovery, but political authorities review events for a social agenda, so that crime is designated according to the relative absence or presence of politics. In investigating this problem, the book introduces the concepts ‘intelligence crime’ and ‘critical forensics.’ It also reviews as an exemplar of this phenomenon ‘apex crime,’ a watershed event involving government in the support of a contested political and social order and its primary opponent as the obvious offender, which is then subject to a confirmation bias. Chapters feature case study analysis of a selection of familiar, high profile crimes in which the motives and actions of security or intelligence actors are considered as blurred or smeared depending on their interconnection in transactional political events, or according to friend/enemy status.

This book explores the conundrum that political fortune is dependent both on social order and big, constitutive crime. An act of outrageous harm depends on rules and protocols of crime scene discovery and forensic recovery, but political authorities review events for a social agenda, so that crime is designated according to the relative absence or presence of politics. In investigating this problem, the book introduces the concepts ‘intelligence crime’ and ‘critical forensics.’ It also reviews as an exemplar of this phenomenon ‘apex crime,’ a watershed event involving government in the support of a contested political and social order and its primary opponent as the obvious offender, which is then subject to a confirmation bias. Chapters feature case study analysis of a selection of familiar, high profile crimes in which the motives and actions of security or intelligence actors are considered as blurred or smeared depending on their interconnection in transactional political events, or according to friend/enemy status.

In spite of Edward Snowden's disclosures about government abuses of dragnet communication surveillance, the surveillance industry continues to expand around the world. Many people have become resigned to a world where they cannot have a reasonable expectation of privacy. The author looks at what can be done to rein in these powers and restructure how they are used beyond the limited and often ineffective reforms that have been attempted. Using southern Africa as a backdrop, and its liberation history, Jane Duncan examines what an anti-capitalist perspective on intelligence and security powers could look like. Are the police and intelligence agencies even needed, and if so, what should they do and why? What lessons can be learnt from how security was organised during the struggles for liberation in the region? Southern Africa is seeing thousands of people in the region taking to the streets in protests. In response, governments are scrambling to acquire surveillance technologies to monitor these new protest movements. Southern Africa faces no major terrorism threats at the moment, which should make it easier to develop clearer anti-surveillance campaigns than in Europe or the US. Yet, because of tactical and strategic ambivalence about security powers, movements often engage in limited calls for intelligence and policing reforms, and fail to provide an alternative vision for policing and intelligence. Surveillance and Intelligence in Southern Africa examines what that vision could look like.

The transnationally coordinated response to "Covid-19" witnessed numerous developments reminiscent of the prewar years of the Third Reich, including the suspension of constitutional rights and freedoms, the rollout of draconian legislation, an attempted revolution from above (the "Great Reset"), the censorship of dissent, health surveillance, euthanasia, eugenics, the corruption of science by politics, and the hijacking of conscience. The list goes on. "Never again!" was the rallying cry after 1945, yet never again is now global. How did we get here? Wall Street, the Nazis, and the Crimes of the Deep State explores the role of Wall Street in promoting the rise of Hitler, funding the Nazi war machine, recruiting and rehabilitating ex-Nazis, and creating a transnational deep state inspired by Nazi methods. Wall Street has long preferred totalitarianism as the regime type most effective in crushing working-class resistance, and as capitalism once more enters a period of acute crisis, the aim is to replace liberal democracy with global technocracy—a novel, biodigital form of totalitarianism whose potential for social control exceeds anything imaginable by Hitler or Stalin. Wall Street, the Nazis, and the Crimes of the Deep State illustrates how totalitarianism does not spring into existence fully formed. In the case of Nazi Germany, the descent into barbarism took place gradually, over many years. Today, the warning signs from history are flashing red. Unless the global technocratic coup being attempted is put down, we can expect the centralization of power in a New World Order, the return of slavery, the privatization of the global commons, and the transformation of society into a biodigital camp, bringing an end to the rule of law and normalizing the use of eugenics and a systematic mass murder of dissidents.

Policing and surveillance acoss international borders has been of increasing concern since the 9.11 attacks in North America, and the accession of the Schengen Accord in Europe. This book brings together leading authorities in the field to discuss both theoretical and empirical aspects of the way in which modern states attempt to control their borders and a mobile population.

Most Americans assume that the United States provides a gold standard for human rights—a 2007 survey found that 80 percent of U.S. adults believed that "the U.S. does a better job than most countries when it comes to protecting human rights." As well, discussions among scholars and public officials in the United States frame human rights issues as concerning people, policies, or practices "over there." By contrast, the contributors to this volume argue that many of the greatest immediate and structural threats to human rights, and some of the most significant efforts to realize human rights in practice, can be found in our own backyard. Human Rights in Our Own Backyard examines the state of human rights and responses to human rights issues, drawing on sociological literature and perspectives to interrogate assumptions of American exceptionalism. How do people in the U.S. address human rights issues? What strategies have they adopted, and how successful have these strategies been? Essays are organized around key conventions of human rights, focusing on the relationships between human rights and justice, the state and the individual, civil rights and human rights, and group rights versus individual rights. The contributors are united by a common conception of the human rights enterprise as a process involving not only state-defined and implemented rights but also human rights from below as promoted by activists.