The Rise of the Security State: From the Great War to Snowden

The surveillance state was also launched during the First World War, primarily to spy on and indict U.S. citizens who protested the war and the draft. The Bureau of Investigation (later renamed the FBI) took charge of enforcing the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, which, in effect, made it illegal to oppose the war and the draft. Military Intelligence hired undercover agents to report on the "subversive" activities of black and radical organizations. That apparatus grew in size and power through the hot and cold wars of the past century and during the "War on terror" in this one.