Bruce Schneier

Your cell phone provider knows your location; vendors record your purchasing patterns; your e-mails, texts, and social network activity are stored indefinitely; and all of this information is used by corporations and governments to manipulate, discriminate, and censor your experiences. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. Security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, showing us exactly what we can do to reform government surveillance programs, shake up surveillance-based business models, and protect our individual privacy. From back cover.

The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

Data and Goliath

You are under surveillance right now. Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches. Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He shows us exactly what we can do to reform our government surveillance programs and shake up surveillance-based business models, while also providing tips for you to protect your privacy every day. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

Lance Willett

Summary: Data is the pollution problem of the information age, and protecting privacy is the environmental problem.

The fundamental issue is how to collectively get value from aggregating our data while minimizing the harms of overreaching surveillance. Benefits include research, education, health care, and other benefits to society; harms involve abuse by corporations and governments, loss of privacy, vulnerability to hackers and criminals, and other dehumanizing effects.

One chilling statistic was 95% of Americans can be identified by just four data points (time/date/location), meaning that anonymous data can be easily deanonymized with enough data points. Even if you do your best to erase your tracks and not use identifiable information when you access devices, the internet, brick-and-mortar retail stores and restaurants — you can still be tracked by identifying similar data points across your entire profile. This is why mass surveillance is both powerful and scary.

Schneier delves into private and public sectors, introduces both the "why" of the data pollution problem and "how" to solve it in the future with better oversight, transparency, and better understanding of the technology and ethics around it.

“Bruce Schneier’s amazing book is the best overview of privacy and security ever written.”—Clay Shirky “Bruce Schneier’s amazing book is the best overview of privacy and security ever written.”—Clay Shirky Your cell phone provider tracks your location and knows who’s with you. Your online and in-store purchasing patterns are recorded, and reveal if you're unemployed, sick, or pregnant. Your e-mails and texts expose your intimate and casual friends. Google knows what you’re thinking because it saves your private searches. Facebook can determine your sexual orientation without you ever mentioning it. The powers that surveil us do more than simply store this information. Corporations use surveillance to manipulate not only the news articles and advertisements we each see, but also the prices we’re offered. Governments use surveillance to discriminate, censor, chill free speech, and put people in danger worldwide. And both sides share this information with each other or, even worse, lose it to cybercriminals in huge data breaches. Much of this is voluntary: we cooperate with corporate surveillance because it promises us convenience, and we submit to government surveillance because it promises us protection. The result is a mass surveillance society of our own making. But have we given up more than we’ve gained? In Data and Goliath, security expert Bruce Schneier offers another path, one that values both security and privacy. He brings his bestseller up-to-date with a new preface covering the latest developments, and then shows us exactly what we can do to reform government surveillance programs, shake up surveillance-based business models, and protect our individual privacy. You'll never look at your phone, your computer, your credit cards, or even your car in the same way again.

Janet Doré

It was Alexa who pushed me over the edge. While I thought it was a nice gesture that my partner's boss gave her to all of his managers, she bothered me. A lot. I felt invaded...and a bit like a commodity so much so that I felt uncomfortable in his home office where she lives. She prompted me to get smarter on this whole data/privacy thing...my online book group gave me the names of several books and Bruce's was first on the stack. 

I'm no longer naïve. In fact, I'm pretty horrified. Because of work, I can't totally abandon my laptop and social media (or I would seriously consider it), but I am significantly changing the way I do things from now on. I can't avoid being track, but Bruce has taught me to mitigate. 

The only reason I didn't give the book a 5 star is that I was really hoping for a checklist of recommended steps and helpful resources. I'm kinda leery of Googling now lol.

Data and Goliath The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World

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