Brendan McQuade is an assistant professor in the criminology department at the University of Southern of Maine and author of Pacifying the Homeland: Intelligence Fusion and Mass Supervision (University of California Press, 2019). In addition to his academic writings, he has published commentaries in The Appeal, The Bangor Daily News, Counterpunch, Jacobin, and The Portland Press Herald. He is a member of the Democratic Socialists of America and on the advisory board of the Visionary Organizing Lab.
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SURVEILLANCE IN MAINE BRENDAN MCQUADE
In the last twenty years since 9/11, surveillance capacities of the US government have surged, transforming the country: a proliferation of new government organizations and companies focusing on counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence; the widespread application of new technologies like automated license plates readers, facial recognition surveillance, IMSI catchers for intercepting mobile phone traffic; and new culture of generalized suspicion. The art exhibit Monitor: Surveillance, Data, and the New Panoptic at Maine College of Art & Design’s Institute of Contemporary Art provides an aesthetic exploration of this increasingly ubiquitous surveillance. While most discussions of surveillance focus on the federal government or large cities, the impact of the post-9/11 surveillance surge extended to all corners of the country —including the mostly rural state of Maine. In 2011, investigative reporters William Arkin and Dana Priest surveyed what they called “top secret America.” They counted over one thousand government organizations and nearly two thousand private companies focusing on security and surveillance in at least 17,000 locations across the United States. Much of this sprawling security apparatus is hiding in plain sight: a National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency office in the shadow of a Michaels craft store and a Books-A-Million, an annex of the National Security Agency near a parking garage in the Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, an “alternative geography” of official secrets hidden in plain sight. 1 The central node of “top secret America” in Maine is the Maine Information and Analysis Center (MIAC), the state’s “fusion center.” While the federal government, through the Department of Homeland Security, encouraged the creation of fusion centers, they are operated by state and local authorities. The Maine State Police are
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FUSION CENTERS
MONITOR
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