Vivid and chilling, `The Soft Cage’ explores the hidden history of surveillance – from controlling slaves in the old South to implementing early criminal justice, tracking immigrants, and closely monitoring the poor as part of modern social work. The relentless expansion of routine surveillance in American life over the last two centuries now finds us in a whole new world of seemingly benign technologies – credit cards, website cookies, electronic toll collection, data mining, and iris scanners at airports. From closed-circuit television cameras to the Department Of Homeland Security, `The Soft Cage’ offers a compelling, vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives.