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9780593443224

Means of Control How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State

by Tau, Byron
  • ISBN13:

    9780593443224

  • ISBN10:

    0593443225

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Copyright: 2024-02-27
  • Publisher: Crown

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Summary

You are being surveilled right now. This “startling exposé” (The Economist) reveals how the U.S. government allied with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers to monitor us through the phones we carry and the devices in our home.

“A revealing . . . startling . . . timely . . . fascinating, sometimes terrifying examination of the decline of privacy in the digital age.”—Kirkus Reviews


SHORTLISTED FOR THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS AWARD

“That evening, I was given a glimpse inside a hidden world. . . . An entirely new kind of surveillance program—one designed to track everyone.”

For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring.

Of course, our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this: Ever get the sense that an ad is “following” you around the internet? But the true potential of our phones, computers, homes, credit cards, and even the tires underneath our cars to reveal our habits and behavior would astonish most citizens. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of valuable data about every one of us. That data is for sale—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government.

In the years after 9/11, the U.S. government, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, built a foreign and domestic surveillance apparatus of breathtaking scope—one that can peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. This cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats has one directive—“get everything you can”—and the result is a surreal world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries. And the public knows virtually nothing about it.

Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is the defining story of our dangerous grand bargain—ubiquitous cheap technology, but at what price?

Author Biography

Byron Tau is an investigative and enterprise journalist who specializes in law, courts, and national security. He reports for and teaches at the Allbritton Journalism Institute, a journalism nonprofit launched in 2023 that trains and mentors early-career reporters. He previously worked at The Wall Street Journal and Politico. A native of Holliston, Massachusetts, Tau has degrees from McGill University in Montreal and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

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