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Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law
Gilliom, John. Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law: Employee Drug Testing and the Politics of Social Control. Ann Arbor, MI: Univ of Michigan Press. June 1996, 181 pages.
 Employee drug testing emerged in the context of a national war on drugs and promised to bring innovative new technologies of surveillance to drug control policy. Surveillance, Privacy, and the Law explores the political and legal battles over this controversial new practice. Studying scientific literature, court rulings, working opinions, and theories of ideological hegemony and legal politics, the author portrays the apparent triumph of testing as a vicotry for the conservative law-and-order movement and as a stark loss for the values of privacy and autonomy as well as the legal and institutional frameworks that support them. As one episode in a broader move toward a surveillance society, the battle over employee drug testing raises disturbing questions about future struggles over revolutionary new means of surveillance and control.
Drawing on theories of ideological hegemony and legal mobilization, the search for the answers begins with an examination of how the imagery of a national drug crisis served as the legitimating context for the introduction of testing. The book then moves beyond the specific history of testing and frames the new policy within a broader transformation of social control policy seen by students of political economy, society, and culture. It cites survey research among skilled workers and analyzes court opinions to highlight the sharply polarized opinions in the workplaces and courthouses of America. Although federal court decisions show massive and impassioned disagreement among judges, the new conservative Supreme Court comes down squarely behind testing. Its ruling embraces surveillance technology, rejects arguments against testing, and undermines future opposition to policies of general surveillance.
About the Author
John Gillion is Assistant Professor of Political Science, Ohio University.
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