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

“Schneier exposes the many and surprising ways governments and corporations monitor all of us, providing a must-read User’s Guide to Life in the Data Age. His recommendations for change should be part of a much-needed public debate.”
—Richard A. Clarke, former chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, and author of Cyber War

Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World
A Book by Bruce Schneier
Published by W. W. Norton & Company, 2015
Hardcover: ISBN 978-0393244816
Paperback: ISBN 978-0393352177

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.

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Excerpts

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Other Editions Available Now:

German (MVG Verlag)

Upcoming:

Arabic (Forum for Arab and International Relations)
Chinese complex (As If Publishing)
Chinese simplified (Gold Wall Press)
Japanese (Soshisha)
Korean (Minumsa)
Swedish (Daidalos)

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GetAbstract Summary

Bruce Schneier on Democracy Now!
March 13, 2015
By Juan González & Amy Goodman

Leading security and privacy researcher Bruce Schneier talks about about the golden age of surveillance and his new book, “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.” The book chronicles how governments and corporation have built an unprecedented surveillance state. While the leaks of Edward Snowden have shed light on the National Security Agency’s surveillance practices, less attention has been paid to other forms of everyday surveillance — license plate readers, facial recognition software, GPS tracking, cellphone metadata and data mining.

Part 1: Data and Goliath: Bruce Schneier on the Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.

Part 2: Bruce Schneier on the Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.