News in the Category "Book Reviews"
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The New America: Little Privacy, Big Terror
Excerpt
In Data and Goliath, Bruce Schneier, a security technologist and fellow at Harvard Law School, explores what it means to have entered the age of mass surveillance. Our data are collected in the first instance by private corporations, but are increasingly exploited, as Edward Snowden has shown, by government intelligence agencies. The NSA didn’t have to build from scratch a vast database on billions of innocent citizens the world over, Schneier explains, because private corporations had already done so. All the NSA needed was access.
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I Read “Data and Goliath” Because of Barbara Fister
I’m interested how we choose the books we read. Here is my request to you. Please keep track of, and share with our IHE community, how you select your books.
For one of the recent books that I read I can definitely share my book selection process. I chose to buy and read (two very different actions) Data and Goliath because of Barbara Fister. Barbara reviewed the book—A Scare-Your-Socks-Off Thriller: Data and Goliath. I bought the book.
If you have not secured your copy of Data and Goliath, or you have an unread copy, I encourage you to make time this summer for the book…
Library Journal Review of Data & Goliath
Starred Review
Schneier, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society, has written an exceptionally readable yet thoroughly chilling book about the dangers of the ubiquitous mass surveillance we face thanks to modern life. While the author focuses on the United States, the rest of the world is largely capable of nearly the same levels of surveillance thanks to the openness of the Internet and the availability of cell phones. Schneier describes the types of data being collected about us, stemming from our interactions, activities, purchases, and where we go. As he competently explains, this “metadata” provides those collecting it with the entire framework of our existence: who we converse with and the duration of the conversation, the things we read (especially electronically), and what we buy. Corporations use this data to deliver targeted advertising and sell our information to other corporations at a large profit. Governments employ the data to map our interactions and otherwise infiltrate our privacy. As Schneier helps us understand the issues, he makes the case that “Ubiquitous mass surveillance is the enemy of democracy, liberty, freedom, and progress.” Though there are few signs of change in corporate and government surveillance practices, Schneier devotes a chapter to practical solutions we can use to limit how we are tracked, information about how other countries approach privacy, and a set of potential principles we could adopt. …
Review: Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier
Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World. New York, NY: W.W. Norton., 2015. Pp. 400. £ 17.99, ISBN: 978-0-393-24481-6.
If you’re not familiar with the Information Security community in the IT industry, it’s worth knowing that Bruce Schneier has earned the reputation of a prophet, sage and action hero combined. As a renowned cryptologist and technologist, Schneier has been a leading critic of the US government’s attempts to limit the global spread of encryption and recently of the NSA’s ‘bulk collection’ program of communication records of US citizens, following the disclosures by Edward Snowden in 2013. …
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, by Bruce Schneier (Review)
Paul Bernal clicks with a maverick thinker who shows how business and governments are building a global surveillance network and how we can fight back
Investigating surveillance—whether corporate or governmental—can be a demoralizing process. Those performing that surveillance, from the US’ National Security Agency and the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to Google and Facebook, are giants so overwhelmingly powerful that it seems too daunting to even contemplate taking them on. Their agendas may be even more terrifying: as Bruce Schneier observes, “The endgame of this isn’t pretty: it’s a global surveillance network where all countries collude to surveil everyone on the entire planet.” What’s more, he adds, the governments and the corporations are both in the same game: “It’s a powerful feedback loop: the business model supports the government effort, and the government effort justifies the business model.”…
Book Review: Data and Goliath, by Bruce Schneier
This book has been difficult to review. It has proved tricky not because I didn’t enjoy the book or because it was boring or badly written, but because it was so pertinent. Every time I went to write about it, a news story would emerge referencing the subject and I would find that my opinions of the news were influenced by the book and my opinions of the book were influenced by the news. This is an important topic and everyone should make up their own minds based on a decent knowledge and understanding of the issues. This book provides an excellent basis for a discriminating reader to do just that (as such, you should probably stop reading this review and just buy the book!)…
Book Review: Data and Goliath—You Don’t Have Any Secrets Anymore
Privacy is becoming an antiquated concept. In “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World” (ISBN: 9780393244816), security expert Bruce Schneier leads you through a labyrinth of surveillance that should scare the hell out of you.
Welcome to the NSA! We want to thank you for helping us with our collection of data about your work and personal habits. By using the computer, phone, public transportation, private vehicle, credit cards, library, banking systems, online shopping, or retail shopping, you are contributing to our data files. Wait, did we say files? We meant mega-warehouse. Either way, we here at the National Security Agency are pleased to get to know you…
Review: ‘Data and Goliath’ Delves into Brave New World of Big Data, Hacking and Cyber Crime
DATA AND GOLIATH. By Bruce Schneier. Norton. 365 pages. $27.95.
“Data and Goliath” is a broad-ranging assessment of our interconnected world, with all of its risks and hidden dangers, by foremost security expert Bruce Schneier. His book makes clear that we are living in the golden age of government and corporate surveillance and control. And that says nothing of the hackers and cyber criminals.
Schneier paints a dismal picture, but he offers several concrete suggestions to correct, or at least minimize, most of the problems. Take the issue of data brokers: If your business would like a list of people who fall in the category of “adults with senior parents” or “potential inheritor” or “diabetic households,” Acxiom can provide them. InfoUSA and Equifax can, too. Schneier points out that every day we allow such companies to spy on us in exchange for services. “If something is free, you are not the customer, you are the product,” he writes…
Bruce Schneier's Data and Goliath—Solution or Part of the Problem?
Think of some of the ways the Enlightenment helped advance the human individual. The ability to shape your identity. The ability to own and control your stuff. Economic autonomy. All three help to define the modern world, they’re ways we know that “now” is not like “before”. All three are founded on the sanctity of the individual. And all three are interlinked.
For example, our identity means little if you can’t express it creatively, by protecting your inventions and creations, and having some say over their use. You don’t have economic autonomy if an individual cannot negotiate what spoils come from exploiting the value of their work. Privacy is built on the same respect, and it’s a more modern and much more culturally specific—laws and norms come from what societies think and feel about the individual. Japanese and Chinese views on privacy are as different as German and American ideas are different…
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (Review)
“We may not like to admit it, but we are under mass surveillance.” So says Bruce Schneier, in his book Data and Goliath, for a popular audience. Schneier is a well-known writer in cryptography, and more recently a public figure in discussions of computer and network security.
The first fifth of Data and Goliath establishes his thesis: we are entering a world of ubiquitous surveillance, by both governments and businesses. He presents numerous anecdotes and stories, many from the Snowden documents (where we learned of the many forms of electronic data collection used by the NSA) and others from the popular press (e.g., the family that found out about their daughter’s pregnancy by the targeted advertising she was receiving). The second fifth explains what is at stake: limits to our freedom of expression (for fear of being attacked with our own secrets), chilling effects on expressions of dissent, discrimination in commercial dealings, as well as a host of abuses. For example, the backdoor built by Ericsson into Vodafone products to support legal wiretaps was abused by unknown third parties in 2004 and 2005 to wiretap members of the Greek government. But surveillance is not all bad: the phone company needs to monitor the location of your mobile phone to direct calls to you…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.