Most fascinating is that throughout these years of anxiety and debate, it was impossible to imagine the means of behavioral modification as anything other than owned and operated by the government: a privileged modality of state power. A 1966 Harvard Law Review article addressed issues of electronic tracking, surveillance, and behavioral control, reasoning that it would “consider governmental attempts to change conduct, since these seem more likely than private attempts.” The democratic impulse of US society, repelled by the excesses of its intelligence agencies, their support of criminal activities undertaken by the Nixon administration, and the migration of behavior modification as a means of disciplinary control in state institutions, led to the rejection of behavioral modification as an extension of governmental power.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1023