Plato's Dreams Realized: Surveillance and Citizen Rights, from KGB to FBI

American democracy is still a model admired around the world, but many Americans and new arrivals alike are shocked by the extent to which the American security apparatus violates the Constitution. Alexander Avakov briefly shares his personal experiences, first in the Soviet Union with the KGB and then with the American national security state. He outlines various ways in which surveillance of citizens is increasing, then examines the bases of our expectations of liberty, from Plato to the US Constitution.

America, he shows, declared high-minded legal ideals but has consistently cheated in their implementation. There is logic, tradition, and a stable modus operandi in the way the American security apparatus violates the Constitution. This book analyzes this socio-pathology of law in the U.S. with regard to national security beliefs.

This book explores the frontiers of legal theory within the United States with regard to modern surveillance and its effects on human rights. The author shares his personal experiences, first with the KGB and then with the US national security state. This second experience helped him realize the dangers of the routine abuses committed by the US intelligence apparatus.

He gives an overview of documents he was able to receive pursuant the Freedom of Information Act—mostly blacked out, although they describe his own suspicious activities, i.e., letter-writing. He broadens the discussion to address the wider issue of electronic surveillance by the government. Former CIA and FBI director William Webster describes the agencies' use of spiderweb electronic surveillance against "foreign agents" with breathtaking directness.

Avakov then examines the art of electronic surveillance as well as the extent of modern total surveillance, with a consideration of the impact of electronic surveillance on rights, and the philosophical basis for the connection between rights and privacy.

Without privacy, there is no autonomy of person; without autonomy of person, there is no freedom. Yet the United States government employs several legal mechanisms, especially against foreign intelligence agents, which hinge on innovative uses of electronic surveillance. Such techniques include the use of friendly countries intelligence services and Echelon to avoid the ticklish problem of obtaining warrants.

Information collected by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) used to be barred from presentation in criminal court as evidence, because it entailed a much weaker probable cause requirement than domestic surveillance. However, developments in connection with the war on terror, such as the USA Patriot Act, allow the US government use of FISC surveillance information for criminal persecution. The resultant weakening of the exclusionary rule and due process in general violate the Constitution.

The history of political spying in the US, as well as warnings by US legal authorities, point to the dangers of electronic surveillance to human rights. The author concludes with a discussion of practical solutions to counter these dangers as suggested in a number of publications.

By way of a resume, Avakov adds an extensive reading list giving some sense of the breadth of knowledge pursued by an intellectual of international caliber. Dr. Avakov is also author of a yearbook of economic and military statistics, Quality of Life, Balance of Power, and Nuclear Weapons.

Plato's Dreams Realized: Surveillance and Citizen Rights, From the KGB to the FBI

Alexander V. Avakov
248 pp

S: 978-0-87586-494-5
H: 978-0-87586-495-2
ebk:978-0-87586-496-9
CQ04 CQ13 CQ09 QC01

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Sound Bite:
Alexander Avakov briefly shares his personal experiences, first in the Soviet Union with the KGB and then with the American national security state, outlines various ways in which surveillance of citizens is increasing, then examines the bases of our expectations of liberty, from Plato to the US Constitution.

America, he shows, declared high-minded legal ideals but has consistently cheated in their implementation. There is logic, tradition, and a stable modus operandi in the way the American security apparatus violates the Constitution. This book analyzes this socio-pathology of law in the U.S. with regards to national security beliefs.

About the Author:
Born in Baku in 1954 to a family of intellectuals, Alexander V. Avakov now lives in Wayne, New Jersey. The journey was not a smooth one.

Just prior to competing his graduate degree in Mathematics in the Soviet Union in 1975, he was arrested for composing and distributing subversive pamphlets compiled of quotes from official Soviet sources including Marx and Engels and the Soviet Philosophical Encyclopedia, excerpts from the US and Japanese constitutions, and a definition of due process of the law taken from a decision of the US Supreme Court. Sentenced to a year and half of hard labor, he was sent to a secret KGB-run camp with 25 other political prisoners including academics, journalists, diplomats, historians, and military men. (Avakov generously shares an extensive description of what a good old-fashioned intellectual used to read before that endangered species disappeared altogether.) He then received a one-year extrajudicial punishment for refusing to cooperate with the KGB.

In 1981 the Soviet Union allowed some of its malcontents to leave and, impressed by America s much-touted devotion to liberty, Avakov came to the United States. Writing letters to friends back home, he soon ran afoul of US officials as well. Protesting in the name of what he supposed were the inviolable rights of a private citizen, he managed in just six years to extract a 99%-censored file from the local office of the FBI, showing that indeed he had been under surveillance between 1982 and 1988. No explanations have ever been given.

Mr. Avakov, a top international consultant in computer systems, has published several books in Russian: Autobiography of a Soviet Anti-Soviet Philosopher ; Letters from Mars ; Fate of Liberalism ; New Turn of History ; and Welcome to a National Security State."
His next book, "World 2007-2008: Quality of Life, Balance of Powers, and Nuclear Weapons: A Statistical Yearbook for Statesmen and Citizens," will be released in January 2008 by Algora Publishing.