Spies Spooking Britain Recall Spanish Inquisition: Lewis Lapham
"God's Jury"
Houghtom Mifflin Harcourt via Bloomberg
The cover jacket of the book "God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World" by Cullen Murphy.
The cover jacket of the book "God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World" by Cullen Murphy. Source: Houghtom Mifflin Harcourt via Bloomberg
Cullen Murphy
Houghtom Mifflin Harcourt via Bloomberg
Cullen Murphy, author of "God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World."
Cullen Murphy, author of "God's Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World." Source: Houghtom Mifflin Harcourt via Bloomberg
Lewis Lapham
Paul Goguen/Bloomberg
Lewis Lapham, of "Lapham's Quarterly," in New York. Lapham interviews authors for Bloomberg News.
Lewis Lapham, of "Lapham's Quarterly," in New York. Lapham interviews authors for Bloomberg News. Photographer: Paul Goguen/Bloomberg
Britain has a high-tech surveillance and data-collection system, with four million closed-circuit television cameras monitoring activity from perches everywhere -- in flower boxes, hotels and on roadways.
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According to Cullen Murphy, author of “God’s Jury: The Inquisition and the Making of the Modern World,” much of the current security apparatus is a legacy of the highly developed Inquisition practices of the Catholic Church.
Under a British law passed in 2000, 474 local governments and 318 agencies are allowed to follow people, listen in on their phone calls, dig into their e-mail files and secretly record their actions -- all on their own brief.
In 2008, a Dorset woman faced this kind of inquisition simply because it was wrongly thought that she was sending her children to a school outside her permitted district.
Security will tighten even more for the upcoming Olympics: there will likely be Royal Air Force spy drones cruising above, bomb-sniffing robots working the crowds and even a high-tech “tunnel of truth” with facial-recognition software and high- tech scanners that all participants will have to pass through.
I spoke with Murphy on the following topics:
1. Moral Certainty
2. Tools of Repression
3. Heretics, Jews, Muslims
4. Torture and Confession
5. Modern Security
To buy this book in North America, click here.
(Lewis Lapham is the founder of Lapham’s Quarterly and the former editor of Harper’s magazine. He hosts “The World in Time” interview series for Bloomberg News.)
To contact the writer on the story: Lewis Lapham in New York at lhl@laphamsquarterly.org.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Manuela Hoelterhoff at mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.
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