The book, which was co-authored with David Rosen (Trinity College), looks at the conflict between surveillance and privacy rights over the last four centuries – and at how this conflict has shaped modern liberalism.

While Santesso and Rosen examine how much of this history has played out in literature (Shakespeare, Swift, Dickens, Poe, Conan Doyle, among others), their work has also taken them very much into real world problems of surveillance, of the sort that has been all over the news recently. The book reflects, for example, their extensive conversations with officers at Scotland Yard and Homeland Security, a former agent of the FBI and numerous individuals working in casino surveillance.