Digital Privacy

The challenges to humanity posed by the digital future, the first detailed examination of the unprecedented form of power called "surveillance capitalism," and the quest by powerful corporations to predict and control our behavior. In this masterwork of original thinking and research, Shoshana Zuboff provides startling insights into the phenomenon that she has named surveillance capitalism. The stakes could not be higher: a global architecture of behavior modification threatens human nature in the twenty-first century just as industrial capitalism disfigured the natural world in the twentieth. Zuboff vividly brings to life the consequences as surveillance capitalism advances from Silicon Valley into every economic sector. Vast wealth and power are accumulated in ominous new "behavioral futures markets," where predictions about our behavior are bought and sold, and the production of goods and services is subordinated to a new "means of behavioral modification." The threat has shifted from a totalitarian Big Brother state to a ubiquitous digital architecture: a "Big Other" operating in the interests of surveillance capital. Here is the crucible of an unprecedented form of power marked by extreme concentrations of knowledge and free from democratic oversight. Zuboff's comprehensive and moving analysis lays bare the threats to twenty-first century society: a controlled "hive" of total connection that seduces with promises of total certainty for maximum profit -- at the expense of democracy, freedom, and our human future. With little resistance from law or society, surveillance capitalism is on the verge of dominating the social order and shaping the digital future -- if we let it.

In our digital world, data is power. Information hoarding businesses reign supreme, using intimidation, aggression, and force to maintain influence and control. Sarah Lamdan brings us into the unregulated underworld of these "data cartels", demonstrating how the entities mining, commodifying, and selling our data and informational resources perpetuate social inequalities and threaten the democratic sharing of knowledge. Just a few companies dominate most of our critical informational resources. Often self-identifying as "data analytics" or "business solutions" operations, they supply the digital lifeblood that flows through the circulatory system of the internet. With their control over data, they can prevent the free flow of information, masterfully exploiting outdated information and privacy laws and curating online information in a way that amplifies digital racism and targets marginalized communities. They can also distribute private information to predatory entities. Alarmingly, everything they're doing is perfectly legal. In this book, Lamdan contends that privatization and tech exceptionalism have prevented us from creating effective legal regulation. This in turn has allowed oversized information oligopolies to coalesce. In addition to specific legal and market-based solutions, Lamdan calls for treating information like a public good and creating digital infrastructure that supports our democratic ideals.

This book investigates the impact of the spread of digital technologies and practices, especially mass surveillance, on privacy and personhood. Lindau argues that the quest for prediction, certainty, and control at the heart of the state's security apparatus destroys an essential component of human dignity and fundamentally undermines liberalism.

Surveillance Capitalism in America offers a crucial historical perspective on the intimate relationship between surveillance and capitalism. While surveillance is often associated with governments, today the role of the private sector in the spread of everyday surveillance is the subject of growing public debate. Tech giants like Google and Facebook are fueled by a continuous supply of user data and digital exhaust. Surveillance is not just a side effect of digital capitalism; it is the business model itself, suggesting the emergence of a new and more rapacious mode of capitalism: surveillance capitalism. But how much has capitalism really changed? Surveillance Capitalism in America explores the historical development of commercial surveillance long before computers and suggests that surveillance has been central to American capitalism since the nation's founding. Managers surveilled labor, merchants surveilled consumers, and businesses surveilled each other. Focusing on events in the United States, the chapters in this volume examine the deep logic of modern surveillance as a mode of rationalization, bureaucratization, and social control from the early nineteenth century forward. Even more, business surveillance has often involved collaborations with the state, through favorable laws, policing, and information sharing. The history of surveillance capitalism is thus the history of technological, legal, and knowledge infrastructures built over decades. Together, the chapters in this volume reveal the long arc of surveillance capitalism, from the violent coercion of slave labor to the seductions of target marketing.

"System Error is a triumph: an analysis of the critical challenges facing our digital society that is as accessible as it is sophisticated." -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America A forward-thinking manifesto from three Stanford professors--experts who have worked at ground zero of the tech revolution for decades--which reveals how big tech's obsession with optimization and efficiency has sacrificed fundamental human values and outlines steps we can take to change course, renew our democracy, and save ourselves. In no more than the blink of an eye, a naïve optimism about technology's liberating potential has given way to a dystopian obsession with biased algorithms, surveillance capitalism, and job-displacing robots. Yet too few of us see any alternative to accepting the onward march of technology. We have simply accepted a technological future designed for us by technologists, the venture capitalists who fund them, and the politicians who give them free rein. It doesn't need to be this way. System Error exposes the root of our current predicament: how big tech's relentless focus on optimization is driving a future that reinforces discrimination, erodes privacy, displaces workers, and pollutes the information we get. This optimization mindset substitutes what companies care about for the values that we as a democratic society might choose to prioritize. Well-intentioned optimizers fail to measure all that is meaningful and, when their creative disruptions achieve great scale, they impose their values upon the rest of us. Armed with an understanding of how technologists think and exercise their power, three Stanford professors--a philosopher working at the intersection of tech and ethics, a political scientist who served under Obama, and the director of the undergraduate Computer Science program at Stanford (also an early Google engineer)--reveal how we can hold that power to account. Troubled by the values that permeate the university's student body and its culture, they worked together to chart a new path forward, creating a popular course to transform how tomorrow's technologists approach their profession. Now, as the dominance of big tech becomes an explosive societal conundrum, they share their provocative insights and concrete solutions to help everyone understand what is happening, what is at stake, and what we can do to control technology instead of letting it control us.

The Personal Digital Resilience Handbook is the essential guide to making your technology resilient - that is, reliable, robust, secure, private, and under your control. Technology is a vital foundation of our lives, and when it fails there can be devastating consequences like losing important files or having personal data stolen. If you feel like you are driving at 90mph on this technology freeway without a seatbelt and want to get some safety and control back, this book is for you. The first four chapters explain in easily-understandable detail how to make your computer and smartphone resilient, keep your files backed up, and use the Internet in a reliable, secure and private way. At the end of each chapter is a checklist you can use to measure your progress. Chapter five covers advanced topics for those who want to go a step further, including threat modeling, Linux and open-source software, an open-source smartphone, off-grid communications, Knowledge Reboot Kits and deleting your digital trail. Are you ready to be digitally resilient?

Who is watching you . . . and why? Written for middle-grade and older readers, Eyes and Spies looks at the way information and data about us is collected and used by individuals, governments, companies, and organizations. Each chapter covers one aspect of the subject, from data collection to computer surveillance to personal privacy. Arguments for both increased security and increased privacy are offered, which encourages readers to think critically about issues and decide for themselves. The book asks three simple questions: Who's watching, and why? Where is the line between public and private? How can you keep your secrets to yourself? "Creepy Line" sidebars highlight controversial real-life scenarios and ask readers where they would set their own boundaries. Action Alerts encourage readers to find out more about how surveillance & data mining affects them. Other topics include how students are tracked at school; cyberbullying, and cyber safety. Colour illustrations and a dynamic design make this an enlightening and engaging read.

Real-world advice on how to be invisible online from "the FBI's most wanted hacker" (Wired). Be online without leaving a trace. Your every step online is being tracked and stored, and your identity literally stolen. Big companies and big governments want to know and exploit what you do, and privacy is a luxury few can afford or understand. In this explosive yet practical book, Kevin Mitnick uses true-life stories to show exactly what is happening without your knowledge, teaching you "the art of invisibility" -- online and real-world tactics to protect you and your family, using easy step-by-step instructions. Reading this book, you will learn everything from password protection and smart Wi-Fi usage to advanced techniques designed to maximize your anonymity. Kevin Mitnick knows exactly how vulnerabilities can be exploited and just what to do to prevent that from happening. The world's most famous -- and formerly the US government's most wanted -- computer hacker, he has hacked into some of the country's most powerful and seemingly impenetrable agencies and companies, and at one point was on a three-year run from the FBI. Now Mitnick is reformed and widely regarded as the expert on the subject of computer security. Invisibility isn't just for superheroes; privacy is a power you deserve and need in the age of Big Brother and Big Data. "Who better than Mitnick -- internationally wanted hacker turned Fortune 500 security consultant -- to teach you how to keep your data safe?" --Esquire

An accessible guide that breaks down the complex issues around mass surveillance and data privacy and explores the negative consequences it can have on individual citizens and their communities. No one is exempt from data mining- by owning a smartphone, or using social media or a credit card, we hand over private data to corporations and the government. We need to understand how surveillance and data collection operates in order to regain control over our digital freedoms-and our lives. Attorney and data privacy expert Heidi Boghosian unpacks widespread myths around the seemingly innocuous nature of surveillance, sets the record straight about what government agencies and corporations do with our personal data, and offers solutions to take back our information. "I Have Nothing to Hide" is both a necessary mass surveillance overview and a reference book. It addresses the misconceptions around tradeoffs between privacy and security, citizen spying, and the ability to design products with privacy protections. Boghosian breaks down misinformation surrounding 21 core myths about data privacy, including- ."Surveillance makes the nation safer." ."No one wants to spy on kids." ."Police don't monitor social media." ."Metadata doesn't reveal much about me." ."Congress and the courts protect us from surveillance." ."There's nothing I can do to stop surveillance." By dispelling myths related to surveillance, this book helps readers better understand what data is being collected, who is gathering it, how they're doing it, and why it matters.

America's most popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how the government and corporate America misuse our personal data and shows how we can reclaim our privacy. Most Americans are worried about how companies like Facebook invade their privacy and harvest their data, but many people don't fully understand the details of how their information is being adapted and misused. In this thought-provoking and accessible book, Thom Hartmann reveals exactly how the government and corporations are tracking our every online move and using our data to buy elections, employ social control, and monetize our lives. Hartmann uses extensive, vivid examples to highlight the consequences of Big Data on all aspects of our lives. He traces the history of surveillance and social control, looking back to how Big Brother invented whiteness to keep order and how surveillance began to be employed as a way to modify behavior. As he states, "The goal of those who violate privacy and use surveillance is almost always social control and behavior modification." Along with covering the history, Hartmann shows how we got to where we are today, how China-with its new Social Credit System-serves as a warning, and how we can and must avoid a similarly dystopian future. By delving into the Constitutional right to privacy, Hartmann reminds us of our civil right and shows how we can restore it.