PANOPTICON mass surveillance in the united states
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First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt – A vocal critic of Hoover who likened the FBI to an 'American Gestapo' for its Index lists. Roosevelt also spoke out against anti-Japanese prejudice during the second world war, and was later a delegate to the United Nations and instrumental in creating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The 3,000-page FBI dossier on Eleanor Roosevelt reveals Hoover's close monitoring of her activities and writings, and contains retaliatory charges against her for suspected Communist activities.
Frank Sinatra – His 1,300 page FBI dossier, dating from 1943, contains allegations about Sinatra's possible ties to the American Communist Party. The FBI spent several decades tracking Sinatra and his associates.
Marilyn Monroe – Her FBI dossier begins in 1955 and continues up until the months before her death. It focuses mostly on her travels and associations, searching for signs of leftist views and possible ties to communism. Her ex-husband, Arthur Miller, was also monitored. Monroe's FBI dossier is "heavily censored", but a "reprocessed" version has been released by the FBI to the public.
John Lennon – In 1971, shortly after Lennon arrived in the United States on a visa to meet up with anti-war activists, the FBI placed Lennon under surveillance, and the U.S. government tried to deport him from the country. At that time, opposition to the Vietnam War had reached a peak and Lennon often showed up at political rallies to sing his anti-war anthem "Give Peace a Chance". The U.S. government argued that Lennon's 300 page FBI dossier was particularly sensitive because its release may "lead to foreign diplomatic, economic and military retaliation against the United States", and therefore only approved a "heavily censored" version.
The Beatles, of which John Lennon was a member, had a separate FBI dossier.
1967–73: The now-defunct Project MINARET was created to spy on U.S. citizens. At the request of the U.S. Army, those who protested against the Vietnam War were put on the NSA's "watch list".
== Church committee review ==
1975: The Church Committee of the United States Senate was set up to investigate widespread intelligence abuses by the NSA, CIA and FBI. Domestic surveillance, authorized by the highest executive branch of the federal government, spanned from the FDR Administration to the Presidency of Richard Nixon. The following examples were reported by the Church Committee:
President Roosevelt asked the FBI to put in its files the names of citizens sending telegrams to the White House opposing his "national defense" policy and supporting Col. Charles Lindbergh.
President Truman received inside information on a former Roosevelt aide's efforts to influence his appointments, labor union negotiating plans, and the publishing plans of journalists.
President Eisenhower received reports on purely political and social contacts with foreign officials by Bernard Baruch, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.
The Kennedy administration ordered the FBI to wiretap a congressional staff member, three executive officials, a lobbyist, and a Washington law firm. US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy received data from an FBI wire tap on Martin Luther King Jr. and an electronic listening device targeting a congressman, both of which yielded information of a political nature.
President Johnson asked the FBI to conduct "name checks" on his critics and members of the staff of his 1964 opponent, Senator Barry Goldwater. He also requested purely political intelligence on his critics in the Senate, and received extensive intelligence reports on political activity at the 1964 Democratic Convention from FBI electronic surveillance.
President Nixon authorized a program of wiretaps which produced for the White House purely political or personal information unrelated to national security, including information about a Supreme Court justice.
The Final Report (Book II) of the Church Committee revealed the following statistics:
Over 26,000 individuals were at one point catalogued on an FBI list of persons to be rounded up in the event of a "national emergency".
Over 500,000 domestic intelligence files were kept at the FBI headquarters, of which 65,000 were opened in 1972 alone.
At least 130,000 first class letters were opened and photographed by the FBI from 1940 to 1966.
A quarter of a million first class letters were opened and photographed by the CIA from 1953 to 1973.
Millions of private telegrams sent from, or to, through the United States were obtained by the National Security Agency (NSA), under a secret arrangement with U.S. telegraph companies, from 1947 to 1975.
Over 100,000 Americans have been indexed in U.S. Army intelligence files.
About 300,000 individuals were indexed in a CIA computer system during the course of Operation CHAOS.
Intelligence files on more than 11,000 individuals and groups were created by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), with tax investigations "done on the basis of political rather than tax criteria".