Tuesday, December 04, 2012
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The End of PrivacyAuthor: Reg Whitaker
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About This Book
Now in paperback, Reg Whitaker's book provides a sobering look at the threats to privacy posed by the new information technologies. The End of Privacy shows how a vast amount of personal information—much of it information people don't even recognize as being personally vulnerable—is moving into corporate hands. Once there, this data can be combined and used to develop electronic profiles of individuals and groups that are potentially far more detailed, and far more intrusive, than the files built up in the past by state police and security agencies.
Whitaker demonstrates that private e-mail can be read; employers can monitor workers' every move throughout the work day; and the U.S. Treasury can track every detail of personal and business finances. He goes on to say that we are even more vulnerable as consumers. From the familiar - bar-coding, credit and debit cards, online purchases - to the seemingly sci-fi ''smart cards'' that encode medical and criminal records, and security scans that read DNA - this book outlines how ordinary citizens are losing control of the information about them and how personal information is available to anyone who can pay for it.
Whitaker is a professor of political science at York University in Toronto. He is the author (with Gary Marcuse) of Cold War Canada and has published widely on politics, security, intelligence, and informational power in the modern world.
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