The state and the Communist Party of Australia: surveillance of dissident politics, 1945-55

Recent announcements by the NSW government to increase security during the Olympic Games in 2000 have focussed attention on the nature of and reasons for surveillance. The word surveillance has sinister connotations, of a hidden watcher observing a person or group of people without their knowledge. The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary notes that the practice applies especially to a 'suspected person.'