Friday, February 28, 2014

Dragnet Nation Author: Julia Angwin Publisher: Times Books ASIN: 0805098070

About This Book

We are being watched. Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance is an inside look at who’s watching you, what they know and why it matters.

We see online ads from websites we’ve visited, long after we’ve moved on to other interests. Our smartphones and cars transmit our location, enabling us to know what’s in the neighborhood but also enabling others to track us. And, as most people know by now, the federal government has been conducting a massive data-gathering surveillance operation across the Internet and on our phone lines.

In Dragnet Nation, investigative journalist Julia Angwin reports from the front lines of America’s surveillance economy, offering an unsettling look at how the government, private companies and even criminals use technology to sweep up vast amounts of our personal data. In a world where we can be watched in our own homes, where we can no longer keep secrets, and where we can be impersonated, financially manipulated, or even placed in a police lineup, Angwin argues that the greatest long-term danger is that we start to internalize the surveillance and censor our words and thoughts, until we lose the very freedom that makes us unique individuals. In response, Angwin conducted a series of experiments to try to protect herself, ranging from quitting Google to carrying a “burner” phone, and found that it's difficult for average citizens to evade the dragnets’ reach.