News in the Category "Type"
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Review of Data and Goliath
The Internet birthed unprecedented freedom of communication, interconnecting individuals from every corner of the globe and every walk of life. This free flow of information has the potential to establish a world of truly free and equal citizens, yet many politicians want to turn this technology inside out and use the Internet as a universal surveillance mechanism. This path would roll back centuries of civil rights and revive feudalism on a global scale. Sadly, this rush to oppression isn’t restricted to some backwater dictator massaging his own ego. The most powerful nations on earth are violating their own laws to continuously develop new and more invasive methods of scrutinizing everyone they can reach…
Ced Kurtz’s Techman Texts: Computer Surveillance Is a Trade-off
Bruce Schneier is a world-renowned cryptographer, computer security and privacy specialist, and author of numerous books on security. So when he speaks, TechMan tends to listen.
In his latest book, “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World,” his point is well worth taking note of: Surveillance and data collections are a trade-off between individual value and group value. You give Google personal information in return for free search, free email, free maps and all the other free things Google provides…
The Ends of Privacy
“Over the past twenty years,” complained Newsweek, the United States has become “one of the snoopiest and most data-conscious nations in the history of the world.” Part of the problem is that “the average American trails data behind him like spoor through the length of his life.” Another part of the problem is that the government and private firms “have been chasing down, storing, and putting to use every scrap of information they can find.” These “vast reservoirs of personal information” are “poured into huge computers” and “swapped with mountains of other data from other sources” with “miraculous speed and capacity.” As a result of these forces, “Americans have begun to surrender both the sense and the reality of their own right to privacy—and their reaction to their loss has been slow and piecemeal.”…
Collecting Private Information
A computer-security expert weighs up the costs and benefits of collecting masses of personal data
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World. By Bruce Schneier.W.W. Norton; 383 pages; $27.95 and £17.99.
SOCIETY has more digital information than ever and can do new things with it. Google can identify flu outbreaks using search queries; America’s National Security Agency (NSA) aspires to do the same to find terrorists. But at the same time people are under constant surveillance by companies and governments, since the rules protecting privacy are hopelessly out of date.
In “Data and Goliath” Bruce Schneier, a computer-security expert, does a fine job of laying out the problems caused by this compulsive collection of personal data, and suggests some steps that would help protect society from the most egregious excesses. The challenges are severe because modern technologies collect large amounts of information on the most innocuous of activities, which formerly left no data trace…
Review: Choking on Digital Exhaust
Mass surveillance by governments and corporations is comparable to child labor or environmental pollution. That is the largely persuasive claim of security expert Bruce Schneier in his new book “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World.” Resistance is not futile, Schneier thinks, although it will be tricky to fight overreaching securocrats and snooping online advertisers without giving up at least some of the genuine advantages of Big Data.
Much of the problem lies in excessive expectations about what mass surveillance can achieve, writes Schneier, who is chief technology officer at security firm Resilient Systems and a fellow at Harvard Law School’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society. It might seem that the combination of huge amounts of collected data and sophisticated data-mining could have prevented the 9/11 attacks or the Boston Marathon bombing. But Schneier says this approach is both very expensive and downright ineffective…
Under the Volcano With Bruce Schneier
I’m in a locked room, underneath a volcano somewhere in the southern hemisphere talking to one of the world’s leading security experts, Bruce Schneier. We’re discussing the NSA, squid, Edward Snowden, Chuck Norris, and what parents should really be worrying about when their kids go online. His new book, “Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World” is picking up rave reviews.
GeekDad: Bruce, please tell us who you are in fourteen words.
Schneier: Security technologist. Speaker, author, researcher. Security and privacy advocate. Anti-fear. Meta meta meta guy…
Fixing the Surveillance-Industrial Complex
A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I was reading Bruce Schneier’s new book, Data and Goliath, just published by Norton. The subtitle (which, as is the custom these days, is more or less an elevator pitch for the book) provides a hint of what’s inside: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World. What’s missing from this descriptive subtitle is the best part: And Here’s How We Can Fix It. Because unlike a lot of books that focus on big scary issues, this one has lots of concrete recommendations and encouragement to think that we can actually make change happen…
Schneier, Bruce. Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Capture Your Data and Control Your World
Focusing on the tension between surveillance and personal privacy, Schneier (Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Harvard Law School) notes that though surveillance has been practiced throughout history, it has become far more intrusive with the advent of computers, tablets, cell phones, and the Internet. Various entities practice surveillance, but the primary ones are governments and corporations. The book is in three parts. The first, “The World We’re Creating,” describes the data individuals generate, how it is gathered by surveillance, how it is used by corporations for advertising and other purposes, and what governments do with it. Part 2, “What’s at Stake,” addresses the harm all this surveillance does and how it impacts individual privacy. The final part, “What to Do about It,” which discusses how people can protect themselves, includes recommendations for dealing with governments and corporations and guidance about individual initiatives one should take. In making his case, Schneier cites numerous examples, many from Edward Snowden’s revelations. In a notes section, the author references and amplifies on his citations. This informative, easy-to-understand book will appeal to a broad readership. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. All readers.—E. M. Aupperle, emeritus, University of Michigan…
Data and Goliath, Book Review: A Handbook for the Information Age
Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World By Bruce Schneier Norton 384 pages ISBN 978-0-393-24481-6 $27.95
We did not exactly know the trade-offs we would be making in 2015 when we first began using email or got our first mobile phones. If anyone had asked 15 years ago whether we wanted a device that enabled governments and corporations to monitor our whereabouts and access the details of our personal, business, and social lives at all times, it’s pretty clear that almost everyone would have said ‘no’…
David and Goliath: What Do We Do about Surveillance?
From spyware designed to catch students misbehaving to police tracking rioters by phone, we are spied on as never before, reveals a book by Bruce Schneier
“DEAR subscriber, you have been registered as a participant in a mass disturbance.” This text was sent by the Ukrainian government last year to everyone with a cellphone known to have been near a protest in the capital, Kiev.
Just what you’d expect from an ex-Soviet country? Not so fast. In the US and Europe, police are also seeking information on phones linked to specific places and times—and always without a warrant. We’re all spied on. Our phones are bugged, our laptops inveterate informants. Reports on activities that define you—where you go, who you meet, what you buy—are sold to the highest bidder. But do we notice? And do we care?…
Sidebar photo of Bruce Schneier by Joe MacInnis.