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

I heard of this book from 404 media and it made me kind of want to smash all my technology and go move into the woods as a hermit.

This book does a good job diving into all the various ways technology companies have started to slurp up all our data, originally for advertising and tracking purposes, but eventually making its way into various government databases as well. And all the data we knowingly or more likely, unknowingly give out about ourselves, and how even when the claim is that it's "anonymized", it really is not all that difficult to still tie it back to the individual. I feel this book is important for us to recognize all the different ways our data is being used and in some cases abused, often in the name of "national security". As Captain Picard once said in Star Trek: "'A matter of internal security.' The age-old cry of the oppressor."

He does finish the book with some good suggestions on how to help protect yourself and your privacy. Some of which I had already been doing, others were good suggestions I plan to start implementing for myself.

If I learned nothing else from this book, it's that we need a federal data privacy and protection law that has real teeth and punishments for those who violate it. And we need it to prevent the government from being able to gain access to our data without a warrant.