The rise of the surveillance state is well documented. Both state and non-state institutions routinely record individual actions to an unprecedented degree. Americans have famously been warned: “[p]rivacy is dead, get over it.” The so-called death of privacy stems from two main sources. First are the increasingly sophisticated tools that the government uses to monitor and track the populace. Fear of the government’s abuse of these tools has prompted some federal and state laws to protect Americans’ privacy, although government surveillance at all levels is ever expanding and broader than most people realize.
To say that companies have come to appreciate the value of consumer data is a gross understatement. The second source derives from the private sector. Companies now regularly collect, aggregate, buy, and sell consumer data on virtually every aspect of people’s lives, including buying preferences, health status, criminal and voting histories, and physical whereabouts. For the modern citizen, this level of surveillance can be a form of control; it can be benign, helpful, or harmful, often depending on the perspective of the surveilled. Increasingly, large-scale data sharing between different levels of government and private industry blurs public/private distinctions.
While this lack of privacy has raised increasingly vocal concerns, the contemporary phenomenon of non-surveillance-that is, systemic invisibility of large portions of certain classes of people living in the United States-has received less attention. We call this the “surveillance gap,” although we acknowledge that the term is imperfect. While the concept of surveillance is commonly associated with government control of its citizenry, some of the harms that we identify occur in the private sphere. Indeed, we adopt a broader notion of “surveillance” altogether, including all “focused, systematic, routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection or direction.” This article thus tracks gaps within a variety of public and private surveillance systems, some of which overlap.
The phenomenon of “the uncounted” is not new. Census. Since its inception, the census has suffered from not just inaccuracies, but also what is referred to as the “differential undercount,” or the routine counting of some classes of people more accurately than others. Historically, the classes of individuals who have received a less accurate count included children, renters, residents of large cities, and racial minorities. This differential undercount is the census equivalent to the surveillance gap. House of Representatives. When, as is routinely the case, populations are regularly left out of the count, those populations are, by definition, under-represented. As Samuel Issacharoff and Allan Lichtman explain, “[i]t is evident that problems surrounding the undercounting of identifiable groups have predictable political consequences . . .
Putting the undercount dilemma aside, this section examines several populations that evade, avoid, or (by design) fall outside the surveillance radar and discusses why. Though people living in the surveillance gap suffer differing experiences and harms, the case studies discussed below reveal several commonalities. First, the surveillance gap impacts some of the most marginalized and politically powerless groups in American society-undocumented people, day laborers, homeless persons, and people with felony conviction histories. Second, just as surveillance is used as a tool to “exert influence and reproduce power relations,” the surveillance gap can also serve as a social control mechanism. Torin Monahan explains that, when it comes to oppressed populations, “surveillance plays an important role in policing bodies and maintaining boundaries between inside and outside, self and other.” In other words, careful watching plays a social sorting function. The same can be said of the extreme privacy that characterizes the surveillance gap. Third, people resist surveillance systems in subtle and empowering ways, quietly reclaiming their humanity and asserting their rights.
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SHE WAS WAITING in her Chevy at a dusty intersection in rural Mississippi when the gunman struck. It was September 17, 1973, and Ann Casey was touching up her makeup en route to a wrestling match in nearby Columbus. At 35 years old, she had spent a decade wrestling in risqué outfits as Panther Girl, becoming the sport’s first pinup and a serious contender for the US women’s title. But then, in an instant, everything changed. A man walked up to her passenger window, pointed a German Luger pistol at her head.
As he pulled the trigger, Casey screamed, and stamped on the accelerator. The shooter was knocked off balance, and missed his shot from point blank range. But as the car fishtailed away he took aim again. Her rear window exploded. Deadly hollow-point bullets rained into the car as it raced away. Designed to mushroom on impact, they cut through Casey’s body, and burst through her chest. The fourth bullet destroyed her liver, and the fifth blew a hole through her left lung, which began to fill with warm blood. The gunman emptied his entire magazine into the Chevy.
Ann Casey was no stranger to pain, but her body told her she was dying. Her sport’s extravagant matches had been fixed for years, but deviation from the script and violent double-crossings were common. No one was impervious to such machinations, not even the ring’s golden girl, with her Bettie Page looks and her Babe Didrikson all-around prowess. In a jealous world full of angry wrestling midgets, crooked promoters, and bitter love triangles, who would want Panther Girl dead?
With every heartbeat, blood spurted from her chest wound and splattered against the windshield. Her lungs had collapsed, and a pool of blood had formed between her legs. Somehow, she was able to drive the short distance to a service station, where her bullet-riddled car lurched onto the forecourt. “I’ve been shot!” she gasped, and a shocked attendant shakily dialed for help. One of the most famous bodies in wrestling slumped against the steering wheel, her eyes glazed over. Only one word fell from Ann’s lips: “Why?”
BORN ON SEPTEMBER 29, 1938, Lucile ‘Ann’ Casey was five years old when electricity arrived in Saraland, Alabama. It was a lawless, farming town just north of Mobile, where differences were settled with fistfights at the local watering hole. Her daddy, John B. Casey, a violent Irishman, and her beautiful, Creek Indian mother, Viola Lillian Smith, would beat each other nightly, and seemed to revel in finding new and creative ways to thrash their daughter. “Daddy wanted a boy to toil in the fields,” she said, “He didn’t show any love towards me.” One brutally cold winter as a child, she was left outside all night long; another time she was struck with a blunt knife so hard that for the rest of her life, a six-inch scar would appear whenever her face blushed.
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The family later moved to Lucedale, just across the state line in Mississippi, where they had bought a 200-acre cotton farm. “I became a white slave,” she said, “a 10-fingered cotton-picking machine.” Ann’s Native American grandfather would tell her stories of the area’s hidden treasure: centuries-old Cherokee loot buried in the ground just below the family’s potatoes. It gave her an incentive to dig.
Field labor made her strong and muscular. She was beautiful too-the talk of the local boys. Desperate to escape the farm and her family, Ann eloped with a boy named Eddie. They faked her age, and at 16, she was married. “He tried to have sex with me through the side of my panties,” she said. And sure as apples was apples, nine months later she gave birth to a baby boy named George.
Daddy was furious. He had the marriage annulled and threatened to kill Eddie. But Ann vowed to raise her boy-she loved him and cared for him like any mother would. Yet as America edged toward the end of the Eisenhower era, the recession of 1958 was in full swing. “You’ll never own a window or a pot of piss to throw out of it,” her father said, as she loaded his wagon with corn. “No-sir-ee, bobtail,” added her mother.
The only job Ann could find was in the box office for the Fields Brothers wrestling company in Mobile. It was 1960, and Lee, Don, and Bobby Fields dominated the Gulf Coast wrestling scene, hosting events at the old National Guard Armory Building. Casey cared little for “rassling,” as it was pronounced, but left young George with an elderly neighbor to earn some cash every weekend.
One evening, a female wrestling match boasted a tag-team that included the Fabulous Moolah. Moolah, born Mary Lillian Ellison, owned America’s top women’s wrestling school, and managed every female wrestler worth booking in the United States. Her unabashed love for money earned Ellison the glorious nickname, which she embraced, even wearing huge sparkling glasses in the shape of dollar signs as part of her costume. The five-foot-six grappler had a beautiful body-but with a face to protect it. She was also known to hide a roll of quarters in her bra to use as a weapon-literally beating wrestlers with their own earnings.
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Ann walked into the dressing room that night and handed Moolah her takings-an envelope stuffed with cash. Around her hips, Moolah wore a giant golden belt that read: WOMEN’S US WRESTLING CHAMPION. When she saw Ann Casey, Moolah froze like a statue.
“Wait a minute, young lady,” Moolah said. “Let me see those legs.”
“Not a chance!” said Ann, outraged.
“With those legs, darlin’, you’d make a lot of money as a wrestler,” she promised. “You could travel to all the wonderful places in the world!” Moolah followed the girl into the darkened hallway, and turned her around by the arm. Ann protested that she had a little boy to pick up. She had to get going.
“Suit yourself,” said Moolah. “But take this in case you ever change your mind.” She handed Ann her details on a piece of paper, which was promptly pocketed and forgotten. Ann had two jobs now-one in the ticket booth and another at a local cocktail bar, where she worked for pitiful tips. There was no time to dream of running away with the circus.
As the summer of 1960 turned into fall, and the pumpkins on the farm turned from green to orange, Casey contemplated another hard winter’s labor for her father. She spent nights crying, fearful that her son would end up just like her, trapped in a penniless existence. Only then did she reach into her coat pocket and find the scrap of paper with Moolah’s details written on it. After much soul searching, she tearfully left six-year-old George with his father, and packed up her battered ’55 Ford Sedan. If Moolah’s promise was true, Ann Casey’s fame and fortune lay in the squared circle.
The Columbia, South Carolina, address was a small, white-framed house with a white picket fence, but behind the suburban façade lay a bizarre new world. When the door opened, Ann saw no one there at all, until she looked down and noticed an angry dwarf with her hands on her hips.
“Is this where the Fabulous Moolah lives?” asked Ann.
“Who wants to know?”
“I’m Ann Casey. I’m here to learn how to rassle.”
Diamond Lil, known to Moolah as “my damned midget,” walked Casey to the small bunkhouse in the back. It had a spit ’n’ sawdust gym and a tired-looking ring made of one-inch plywood, with old padded carpet and a torn canvas tarp. A sign read: GIRL WRESTLING ENTERPRISES, and a poster suggested: IF YOU CAN'T WIN YOU CAN'T LOSE. IF YOU CAN'T LOSE YOU CAN'T WIN. Lil tossed Casey a black, one-piece bathing suit.
“Training starts at six o’clock tomorrow morning,” said Diamond Lil, wagging a chubby finger. “Don’t you dare be late.”
At dawn, Moolah entered the gym flanked by her husband Buddy Lee, an Italian wrestling champion from the Bronx, and Gypsy Joe, a trainer. Moolah looked at Casey and whistled. “Doesn’t she look sexy in that swimsuit?” That morning Moolah taught Casey the basics: how to fall correctly, and the names of the holds: top arm lock, side headlock, the step-over leg hold, and the referees position. Casey’s head was spinning with the flying mare and the half nelson, as Gypsy Joe watched while eating a whole sweet potato, which he provocatively mushed around his lips and mustache.
“This girl’s going to the top in a hurry,” Moolah told Gypsy, as they watched Casey sprint around the ring. Fresh air and farm labor had given Casey a breathtaking body, with strong arms, shapely legs, and a muscular back. Casey had spent her youth running barefoot across the fields-she could ride, punch, and kick. And she could leap fences like a deer. “It’s easier than openin’ and closin’ the gate,” Casey explained, the first time Moolah watched her jump the top rope. It was a feat the manager had never previously witnessed. Moolah liked what she was seeing, be-cause what she was seeing was dollar signs.
“Stick with me, and I’ll make sure you get the best billings and be pushed to the top,” said Moolah, as she led Casey into a bedroom filled with multicolored outfits. Moolah casually flicked through dozens of reinforced swimsuits made from bright colors and patterns, all tailored at great expense.
Casey picked a leopard-print costume, and tried it on. Moolah handed her two rubber breasts. “There ain’t no damn way!” Casey shrieked, but reluctantly gave them a try. Then Moolah teased Casey’s long black hair into curls, and applied thick stage makeup. When Ann Casey emerged from the room in a cloud of hairspray, she had changed from a Mississippi farm hand into Panther Girl, the most glamorous wrestler in the South.
“Holy shit,” gasped Gypsy Joe, and dropped his potato.
THE CROWD WAS RESTLESS in Spartanburg, South Carolina. It was the fall of 1961, and temperatures had risen across the South. Following violent clashes at civil rights demonstrations, martial law was imposed in the town of Montgomery and had only recently been lifted. At the time, black wrestling spectators were segregated, and watched from the buzzard seats, where the air grew thick with tobacco smoke and sizzling onion fumes. It was a relief for all sections of the audience to suspend their disbelief for an evening, to boo and hiss at the bad girls, or “heels,” as they entered the ring. The fans antagonized the referee and booed Brenda Scott and the dark-skinned Rita Cortez-producing what Moolah called “heat.”
Then came Ann Casey and Judy Grable, the all-American baby-faces whom the crowd would root for. Moolah taught Casey the ways of the ring: how to pull punches to prevent hurting her opponent, how to choreograph a good fight, and how a spectacular finish left the crowd on a high point, begging to come back next week. It was known in the trade as “kayfabe,” a closely guarded code word for the wrestlers’ fake version of reality.
The crowd had never seen a woman wrestler jump the top rope and an audible gasp rose from stands as Casey made her ring debut. “...And in the blue corner, from Mobile, Alabama, weighing in at 140 pounds, is Ann Casey-the Panther Girl!” shouted the announcer. The bell clanged. Casey and Cortez ran towards each other, becoming a mess of hair and flying limbs. Casey threw Cortez straight out of the ring where she hit the floor with a sickening thud. When Cortez returned, Casey followed Moolah’s script throw-for-throw.
“Now it’s the end,” Casey whispered in Rita’s ear. She lifted the helpless body across her shoulders and turned her around and around, the crowd growing louder with every revolution. Then she sent Cortez crashing down on the mat and pinned her. The referee slid in with a “One...Two...Three!” and Panther Girl’s trademark airplane spin was born. Ann Casey was the winner, mobbed by adoring fans.
She then saw the families in the crowd with their children, and thought of little George, miles away at home. He was a preschooler now, and Ann missed her little boy very much. She longed for her first check from Moolah to send toys home, but instead of wages she was shocked to be presented with an invoice.
Wrestling training, Bunkhouse rent, Moolah’s meals... The list went on, and totaled nearly $8,000. Moolah explained that all her girls had to pay their way, and that Casey must hit the road with her merry band to earn the money back. It would take “no time” Moolah promised, and handed Casey the keys to an old Chevy.
Ann Casey began to travel all over the South, wrestling local girls, handing Moolah a third of her income, with continued further deductions for “personal expenses.” Through these accounting gymnastics, Moolah amassed diamond rings and fur coats, while her wrestlers slept in their cars, surviving on tinned sardines and crackers. Panther Girl barnstormed small-town America in her leopard swimsuit. “Just look at that figger!” the cigar-chomping ring announcers would gasp, “Goddamn... What a helluva body!” Through the years, Panther Girl defeated many of the sport’s greats of the time-Toni Rose, Brenda Scott, even the much younger Leilani Kai later in her career-winning fans in every town.
During the summers, young George traveled with Ann, and they lived out of suitcases, enjoying the romance of the road. He watched with glee as his mother entered the ring, and would join the local kids in firing spitballs at her when she occasionally played the heel. In a newspaper article from that period, George is listed as the president of the official Panther Girl fan club. An interviewer joked that George was also her press agent, poking his head into her dressing room, and asking, “Hey Mom, you ready for this girl now?”
“Wrestling,” Casey would tell reporters, “has changed my entire personality and outlook on life.” The girl that once lived in fear of her parents’ savage beatings was now a legend in the ring, and turning into one outside of it. Occasionally, overzealous fans would get carried away and jump in. Casey would send them packing with sore heads and red faces. Once, a woman in Texas battered her with a handbag full of metal horseshoes. Another time in Montgomery, three drunks jumped her in the parking lot-when the cops arrived, Casey had two of them pinned.
In the winter, Casey avoided out-of-town bookings to be back home in Mississippi with her son. “I was a mother first, and wrestler second,” she said. George would still accompany her to nearby matches; he earnestly did his homework in the dressing room while she performed drop kicks and gave interviews to the wrestling press.
In a newspaper article printed just before the shooting, Casey had spoken of the rivalry with her former mentor and hated rival, Fabulous Moolah, the women’s-wrestling tsarina who held the industry in a stranglehold. “Moolah’s got so many tricks up her sleeve, it isn’t even funny,” Casey said. “I’ve wrestled her before, and golly, she did everything to me short of murder.” Wrestling fans knew that Casey had her eye on Moolah’s championship belt, and that the two had bitterly split over finances. But outside of the ring, Casey harbored a secret: her travels as a wrestler were a cover for something much more clandestine.