Book Launch: Bernard Keenan - Interception

State Surveillance from Postal Systems to Global Networks (MIT Press, 2025)

In his 2025 book Interception, published by MIT Press, Bernard Keenan provides a fascinating media history of how the UK and US governments have surveilled citizens by intercepting private communications. The book shows how law and information systems have been interpolated over time, linking communication, governmental power, law, and information science—often to dark, antidemocratic ends. As the publisher describes it: "It may not be Big Brother (yet), but the state is watching you—watching all of us, in fact, systematically intercepting our private communications and putting them to work in its own interests. In Interception, a media genealogy of the surveillance state at its most intimate, Bernard Keenan investigates the emergence of this practice as a governmental power, and the secret role it has played in the development of communication systems and law." The book is available open access via MIT Press