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LARRY HANNANT. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1995. Pp. x, 330, illus. $50.00 cloth, $17.95 paper
The Infernal Machine is a study of the Canadian state's use of security vetting to investigate the loyalty of its citizens. In analysing this 'neglected descendant' of the 'complex marriage of security and intelligence,' Larry Hannant has five main aims: to investigate the motives underlying the Canadian state's investigation of loyalty and the development of the methodology of investigation; to describe the creation of a system of security vetting that matured -- rather than emerged during the Second World War; to describe the international milieu of security vetting; to demonstrate how an ideology based on 'utter faith in the infallibility of science and technology,' and in particular on the efficacy of mass fingerprinting, created a 'menace to Canadians' political rights'; and, finally, to probe the public response to security vetting.
The author's trawl of newly available security sources produces much useful and non-controversial information. On the international links of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, for example, he shows how Canada, Britain, and the United States formed an intelligence community that routinely shared technical and political information about subversion and counter-subversion and how, over time, the RCMP'S special relationship with British Intelligence gave way to an ever closer north-south alliance. Similarly, his exploration of the 'technical context' of the 'politics of identification,' centred on the supposed infallibility of fingerprinting, is utterly exhaustive (the deceptively bland subtitle 'Fingerprinting to 1939' could be re-titled: 'All You Ever Wanted to Know about Fingerprinting -- and More'). The...