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

by Byron Tau

You are being surveilled right now. This sweeping exposé 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

“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 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 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?

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Technology, History, Audiobook, Business, Sociology

381 pages, Kindle Edition

First published February 27, 2024

Reviews

[Stitching Ghost · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I was quite the target audience for this one, most of what Tau had to say I was already well aware of. For someone who isn't already more than passingly familiar with the notion of a surveillance state would be a decent intro to the topic.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government is Creating a New American Surveillance State, is, quite frankly, terrifying. Unless you’re actively employed as a cybersecurity analyst, or you’re well-acquainted with someone who works in this field, along with other national security professionals/establishments, you are probably, at best, only slightly informed as to just how much of your privacy you are often willingly giving up, just for faster and easier access to information and other services in life.

It’s especially bad if you actively post on multiple social media platforms. Your content, your location, your interests - along with everything else in your SmartPhone - is almost 100% being sold to third-party data mining companies, usually with the usual excuse in place (when, or even if they’re ever caught) that they’re doing so to keep the nation safe. Sure, because knowing someone’s fitness routine and what sneakers they prefer for running is really going to improve our national security and help us to keep potential terrorists out.

Even for those of us who believe that because we don’t actively engage in use of social media, or for instance, my uncle, who doesn’t even have a cell phone: they’re still able to track you, through ways you never thought of. The tires on your car, the systems in your car… they all have built-in devices to track your vehicle and where you’re going, to build a profile of who you are and what you’re doing. Even just being around one family member with a SmartPhone (even if the rest of the family carry no phone) subjects the everyone to the same privacy intrusions.

How it works is something best left explained by the author, who does his best to describe everything in layman’s terms… yet, if you’re not familiar with cybersecurity or technology terminology, much of the verbiage will still be unknown to you. Even though I’ve taken university courses in this subject, they were a couple of years ago, and hence, not everything always made complete sense to me at times, either.

So, that begs the question: are any of us actually able to avoid these invasions of privacy? Well, there is a chapter devoted to that question. Sure, it’s always possible, but it’s not cheap. And it also depends on making sacrifices that too many Americans will never be able to make, not if they want to continue living in a modern society and enjoying time with their friends as they know it.

Michael Bazzell, a former law enforcement investigator he speaks to in one of the final chapters of the book, spent nearly two decades working on cybercrime for the FBI before turning privacy consultant to help hundreds of clients each year reclaim some aspect of their digital privacy:

”Many of Bazzell’s basic recommendations do not require being wealthy to implement. But they often require time, technological savvy, and in some cases sacrifice… and of course, to truly disappear, to burn down your entire digital trail and start over, does require a great deal of time and money. It requires switching addresses and cars; changing every single digital identifier associated with you and rebuilding them in a more privacy-friendly way. It requires the creation of a sprawling array of shell corporations and fake digital personas and identifiers. And it requires constant vigilance and understanding the ever-changing threat landscape to our personal privacy and anonymity.”

The author asks Brazzell if it will ever become impossible to disappear. His response?
”No, it’s that balance of convenience versus privacy. Can you disappear? Of course, that’s not going away. Will you enjoy that life? Maybe not.”

An incredibly important read to those concerned with their privacy and just exactly how much the government and private data-mining companies are able to access, and through what means.

[Jolanta (knygupė) · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5*
Gal labiau JAV auditorijai ir šiek tiek sausokai. Bet šiaip jau pakankamai informatyviai. Kam įdomi priežiūros/sekimo tema, rekomenduoju.

[Reading · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Despite my fascination with this field I found Means Of Control to be overly dry and a bit of a slog. Perhaps another example of my having read so many books on a particular topic that there was little new here, plus the style was not as engaging as the author's many source books - ie. Snowden, Wylie, or even Zuboff. Tau spent too much time in the first 1/4 on foreign surveillance, and while I get that his intention was to set up and connect these practices to the methods eventually implemented in the US, it all began to feel like an acronym stew and overly broad.

My lower rating is of course mostly related to it not matching my stylistic preference as I'm certain there are those who will love this book because it's so dry. There's no doubt, it's an excellent... resource book, just not an engaging read for me.

Additionally, I found the... bias/views a bit off putting at times. Here are some examples.

Writing about US military in the Middle East:
"...the countries military would invade, occupy, and reconstruct Afghanistan and later Iraq."

Then covering prisoner interrogation:
"After fifty-one interrogation sessions, a lower level Iraqi prisoner swept up in one of JSOC's raids had provided..."

I personally have issues concerning sanitized generalizations like 'reconstruct', 'swept up' & 'provided', when describing the cataclysmic failed attempt at rebuilding, the capture, imprisoning and torture of largely innocent civilians - describing information (generally faulty) extracted through torture as being 'provided' c'mon! Given the reality on the ground and the impact on the citizens in those countries, the authors choice of words often left me angry and deeply offended, but that's just me.

Another example that irked me:
"The United States is routinely accused of killing civilians while conducting military operations against terrorist groups like ISIS, for example, and indeed sometimes the United States does kill civilians inadvertently as the by-product of strikes against legitimate targets. But in other instances, it's false propaganda..."

Oof, that sure sounds like a gentle way of saying, mistakes were made. Exemplary of the author's ability to create an overly wordy easy of saying something simple and in the process muddling the facts.

Basically, often the clinical, overly detailed (but not new details) and dry nature of the writing was not engaging and suffered in making any of the facts... human and accessible.

So, for me this would be a recommendation to pass on reading, especially if you haven't read the authors I listed above, BUT remember this book when you are looking for the go to book for seeking a reference and use the index, no need to read the whole thing.

[Julius · Rating 4 out of 5]

Means of control es un libro apabullante, pedagógico y ameno sobre nuestro mundo tecnológico. Examina el deprimente estado del espionaje del que somos objeto en nuestra vida diaria (apps, cookies, flujos de datos para la personalización de publicidad, automóviles, dispositivos conectados, smartwatches)…

…pero no desde el punto de vista de la “privacidad privada” o el muy sobado incumplimiento rampante de la normativa por parte de las grandes empresas.

No: el libro detalla la compra, uso y abuso de estos mismos datos pero por parte del Estado: policía, agencias de información, ejército, contratistas militares privadas.

La perspectiva es enmudecedora.

Cumpliendo una de las reglas de oro que es terminar en todo lo alto, el autor incluye una par de cargas de profundidad que, leídas hoy, resultan proféticas:

«O, dicho de otro modo, las consecuencias del rastreo persistente habían recaído durante décadas principalmente sobre otras personas: sospechosos de terrorismo, inmigrantes sin autorización, criminales y personas que vivían fuera de Estados Unidos. Los patrones de vida sospechosos, o firmas, que las agencias más poderosas del gobierno estadounidense han estado buscando en enormes volúmenes de datos eran, por lo general, aquellos que no afectaban a muchos estadounidenses de clase media. Pero la decisión Dobbs hizo que la recolección de datos se sintiera de repente como algo personal para cientos de millones que nunca antes se habían sentido vulnerables».

[The Dobbs decision fue la sentencia del Tribunal Supremo estadounidense que reconoció la libertad de cada estado para criminalizar o no el aborto.]

«Hoy en día, lo que separa a Estados Unidos de China es una delgada membrana de leyes, normas, capital social y—quizás sobre todo—una persistente cultura de incomodidad tanto entre los funcionarios del gobierno como entre los ciudadanos comunes respecto a la acumulación excesiva de poder e información por parte del Estado. Es una profunda desconfianza típicamente estadounidense hacia el poder centralizado y la autoridad gubernamental. Pero gran parte de eso está en juego: Estados Unidos se encuentra en un momento crítico para decidir su futuro tecnológico. Tenemos tribunales que funcionan y un sistema de controles y equilibrios. Tenemos libertad de expresión y elecciones justas.»

La esencia del libro es que los auténticos y originales recolectores de datos digitales fueron las empresas de anunciantes. Estas empresas capturaban todos los datos que podían sobre nosotros, para perfilarnos y lograr que terceras empresas pudieran hacernos anuncios y ofertas de productos que estuviéramos más cerca de comprar. Todo esto tiene que ver con el gigante Acxiom y los data brokers.

Puede que yo no sea el público objetivo de este libro, ya que la mayoría de las ideas que transmite ya las conocía, y el espionaje es un tema bastante tratado. Sin embargo, creo que lo más importante es la idea que se descuelga de esta obra: seguramente, los mayores culpables del espionaje a nuestros datos no sean las empresas. Cada vez tengo más claro que los malos no sean Meta, Google, Amazon, etc. Su ansia principal es vendernos productos. Sin embargo, empiezo a pensar que los Estados pueden llegar a obligar a estas grandes empresas a tener puertas traseras para poder espiarnos.

De hecho, cabe recordar que en Estados Unidos existen las órdenes FISA, que son SECRETAS y que obligan a obedecer las peticiones del gobierno de EEUU a las BigTech.

Cosas que no sabías sobre Grinder…

«Como mostró Yeagley, toda esa información estaba disponible a la venta, y por poco dinero. Y no se trataba solo de Grindr, sino de cualquier app con acceso a la ubicación precisa de los usuarios: otras aplicaciones de citas, aplicaciones del clima, juegos. Yeagley eligió Grindr porque generaba un conjunto de datos particularmente rico y su base de usuarios podría ser especialmente vulnerable.»

… metadatos (ejemplo: tu uso de WhatsApp)…

«Un estudio de Stanford de 2016 que recopiló metadatos telefónicos de voluntarios dispuestos a ser vigilados en nombre de la ciencia dio ejemplos de las inferencias que se podían extraer de los registros telefónicos de los participantes. El participante B, por ejemplo, “recibió una llamada larga de un grupo de cardiología en un centro médico regional, habló brevemente con un laboratorio médico, respondió varias llamadas cortas de una farmacia local, y realizó llamadas breves a una línea de autoinforme para un dispositivo de monitoreo de arritmias cardíacas”. El participante D “realizó llamadas a una ferretería, cerrajeros, una tienda hidropónica y un ‘coffee shop’ en menos de tres semanas.” Y la participante E “hizo una llamada larga a su hermana temprano por la mañana. Dos días después, llamó varias veces a una clínica de planificación familiar cercana. Dos semanas más tarde, hizo llamadas adicionales breves a planificación familiar, y un mes después, otra llamada corta.” Es razonable suponer que el participante B sufrió un infarto recientemente, que el participante D se estaba preparando para cultivar marihuana, y que la participante E estaba buscando un aborto. Todo eso podía inferirse sin necesidad de intervenir sus líneas telefónicas ni escuchar el contenido de las llamadas. Los metadatos pueden decir mucho. El exdirector tanto de la CIAcomo de la NSA, Michael Hayden, lo expresó crudamente en 2014:«Matamos personas basándonos en metadatos.»

… OSINT…

«Aunque los analistas de la comunidad de inteligencia llevaban años advirtiendo sobre el potencial de disturbios civiles, así como sobre la inestabilidad y la corrupción de los gobiernos en el norte de África y Oriente Medio, pocos habían previsto un acontecimiento generacional que barrería casi todos los países de la región de una forma u otra, derribando numerosos gobiernos y desatando múltiples guerras civiles. “Nos habíamos acostumbrado demasiado a robar secretos y no prestábamos suficiente atención a la información importante que circulaba por Twitter y estaba a la vista del mundo”, admitió el subdirector de la CIA Michael Morell en sus memorias tras retirarse del servicio gubernamental.»

… Twitter…

«Twitter solía atraer a una gran cantidad de usuarios que tuiteaban bajo seudónimos semi-anónimos. Eso les daba la ilusión de privacidad y anonimato. Pero esos seudónimos no eran tan privados como la gente creía, y en los datos de sus fotos, en la información de sus tuits, en las personas o temas que seguían, o simplemente en la enorme cantidad de pequeñas pistas sobre su identidad que dejaban online, estaban incrustados indicios reales sobre sus identidades y personalidades. Cuando el director del FBI, James Comey, dejó entrever que rondaba por Twitter bajo una cuenta seudónima, la periodista de Gizmodo Ashley Feinberg identificó su supuestamente privada cuenta tras solo cuatro horas de investigación. Si el director del FBI no puede mantener un perfil bajo usando un seudónimo, ¿qué esperanza nos queda al resto?»

«Tras la adquisición de Musk, Twitter dejó de responder a los periodistas. La cuenta de correo a la que recurrían para pedir declaraciones ahora responde con un emoji de caca.»

… cómo localizaban (y mataban) a los majaras que se unían al ISIS…

«Se estaban uniendo a un grupo terrorista internacional que era perseguido por una coalición multinacional formada por algunas de las potencias militares más capaces y sofisticadas del planeta. Pero estaban tan acostumbrados a compartir su vida con desconocidos que a muchos no se les ocurrió que las coordenadas GPS en sus tuits, las montañas al fondo de sus fotos, los rostros de sus compañeros yihadistas y docenas de otras migas digitales eran como balizas que la coalición liderada por EE.UU. contra el ISIS podía usar para localizarlos. Muchos pagaron con sus vidas esos errores de seguridad operativa.»

«Nunca he encontrado una política de privacidad de app móvil que declare que una agencia de inteligencia o un servicio de seguridad gubernamental podría estar comprando los datos. Muchas reconocen que podrían verse obligadas a entregar datos del usuario en respuesta a una orden judicial, pero en general las políticas de privacidad sobre la venta y el intercambio de datos hacen dos afirmaciones: primero, que los datos se anonimizan si se transfieren y que no se comparte información identificable; segundo, que la finalidad de esos datos es para análisis, publicidad o comercio.»

Reseña adaptada del blog Zero Party Data

[Ruth Robertson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came into this book as a layperson with no background in the subject matter, and it was dense, labyrinthine, and at times confusing with the many many acronyms, actors, agencies, and matryoshka shell companies. This is no fault of the author, though, because it is meant to be utterly opaque and obfuscating.

At times, I found the prose dry compared to other non-fiction I've read about similarly dense topics, and the overlapping timelines of the chapters by subject made some of the technologies/actors difficult to place in context with one another.

So, while this was a four-star read for me, I acknowledge that I may not be the target audience, and there is no doubt that it was thorough, well reported, and honest about what questions still remain. I found his suggestions for how to anyone can take better charge of their security a helpful endnote to what is otherwise our collective Orwellian nightmare born of convenience.

--I received a free ARC from a Goodreads giveaway, but my opinions are my own--

[Lydia Simon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Byron Tau provides the reader with a solid understanding of the politics and history of AI, even if he doesn't delve as deep as I would have liked. This book could have been twice as long and still felt like an overview.

It's intended for a general audience looking to get an introduction to the subject and ideas for further research on the reader's part. It also offers a handy guide to how to protect yourself from AI, even if it doesn't detail how exactly AI works.

I appreciate that the book raises serious concerns without being overly alarmist. It might make you look askance at your devices, but it arms you with steps you can take to mitigate privacy concerns, so you won't panic.

Tau seems to have done extensive research, but the version of this book that I read (I won it in a giveaway, so it might not be the final draft) didn't make me feel like I would be able to explain how AI works, even if I have a somewhat better understanding of the political and economic issues with it. It seems geared toward people for whom an overview is enough. It achieves that goal pretty well.

Tau's writing is occasionally dry, but still journalistic in style and accessible to a general audience. Anyone looking for an introduction to the subject should definitely consider reading this book.

[Carole · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a comprehensive history of how our data has been gathered and used by the government over the last fifty or so years. The amount of information available on us is amazing, and the technologies used to gather it are frightening. I won’t think about my tires the same way again.

[John Draxler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Means of Control is excellently researched and drives home a message about data privacy without ever going out on a limb. Every argument is backed up with events that (despite the best efforts of everyone involved) became public through leaks, litigation, and the reporting of Tau himself. The subject matter is pretty complex but the author does a good job of making it digestible to the average reader. I'm going to buy a tinfoil hat now — with cash.

[Kashmir Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of great intel in here for privacy obsessives like myself, about how corporate data collection has created a trove of surveillance for government actors.

The structure of the book is a straight chronology, starting around September 11th and the well-tread topic of how data brokers such as Acxiom surfaced surprising details about the plane hijackers’ activities and associations after the attack. It then moves steadily, sometimes ploddingly — the hazard of a straight chronological structure — toward the present.

It got most interesting for me at the halfway mark, when covering the last decade of data capture, particularly the mass collection of location information from phones and the histories of the various companies and players in that space. Lots of great anecdotes and narrative color, while providing an excellent overview of how these location marketplaces work and how they got so deeply intertwined with law enforcement.

You will want to delete every single extraneous app on your phone when you finish the book and turn off all location tracking. The author doesn’t even let Uber and Lyft track his location, instead opting to enter the address for his pick-up spot manually.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up Means of Control only to read and discuss together with a privacy minded friend. I would not otherwise have read this book. So I am not necessarily the target audience. It was well written, for the most part. But overall I'm not sure I really gained more useful knowledge than what I already surmised about the state of privacy in our digital age.

The book is super easy to read, especially for such a weighty topic. This likely comes from the author's day job as a journalist. Each chapter is nicely contained. There are links between chapters and those are usually spelled out for the reader. There is a bit of acronym soup given all the intelligence organizations involved, but you can kind of just read them all as the same entity and still get the correct gist.

And the gist is basically that all governments and corporations work together to collect data about everyone. This is most obviously done through means such as location services on smartphones. Less obvious examples are things like the sensors in car tires that track the air pressure. How the location services and data collection are inserted into the various apps on your smartphone was the most eye opening bit of the entire book.

I'm a software engineer, but I've never worked on commercial software let alone free smartphone apps, so the practice of trading unknown code for funding is totally foreign to me. I can't really say it's shocking, though.

And that kind of sums up my feelings about the book overall. I already knew there was a deep level of data collection and illicit data collation. I am mostly cognizant of what is going on when I click yet another "Accept Cookies" button on a web site or yet another "Allow Permissions" on some phone app. Like the author's experience trying to remove all tracking from his new Ioniq5, I just throw my hands up and accept that I will be tracked whether I want to be or not.

The second half of the book was less intriguing than the first half. The closer Tau gets to the current day, the more his writing deals with companies and agencies he's had personal interactions with as a journalist. Several of the chapters don't seem to add much of anything except for Tau to string a bunch of anecdotes about dealing with the representatives of those entities. One chapter in particular seems like Tau is just still upset about one company personally targeting him with cease and desist style letters.

The closest the book ever gets to actionable advice about what to actually do about all this tracking is the appendix. And even that didn't present anything I wasn't already familiar with. I will say I started paying more attention to what I put on my phone and what articles I click on. But I think totally removing myself from the grid would not be fun, as acknowledged by Michael Bazzell, the author of Extreme Privacy: What It Takes to Disappear in America featured in a late chapter of Means of Control.

I enjoyed reading Means of Control. I agree with the broad points regarding concerns over our involuntary surveillance state. I appreciate some of the history about how we got from targeted ads to government tracking of everyone.

[Scott Exaros · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's scary the amount of data we just willingly and unknowingly share. For the average law abiding citizen, it's not a huge concern, but the data that COULD be leaked could cost you money, time, and more regardless of who you are. So, take the steps you can to minimize that likelihood. What steps? Step 1: Read this book to find out.

[Lauren Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Uff… dense book but so many good takeaways. Terrifying & depressing but informative. Plus he shares an ordinary person’s guide to digital privacy.

[Jer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Necessary reading for anyone interested in national security or privacy… which aren’t actually that different from each other nowadays.

[Arman · Rating 3 out of 5]

You can’t run from corporate and government surveillance. After all, they “kill people based on metadata.”

[Marcel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Highly recommended.

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting!

[doomedsardines · Rating 3 out of 5]

A rather deep research into the topic of US goverment's use of the vast data available from marketing brokers and other legal and gray sources. With 9/11 as starting point we got in Orwellian setting and even beyound. Thought China was a survellince state, think again - it's USA. Few important points if you are reluctatnt to read the book:
- Most of the free apps track you by means fo 3rd party SDK, that how they make money
- Any device, like pressure sensors in your car's tyres, can be used for tracking purposes
- Anonimized data is flop, since your patterns are unique to you only
- Everybody spies, some just trying to fool you with a good cause behind
Some reviews mention that book is a bit dry, I partly agree, however, I was mostly overwhelmed with number of names of all the different stakeholders in agencies and the firms. It's perhaps fine for the target audience in US, but if you are an outsider it might be a bit tricky to keep up.

[Bruin Mccon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely frightening exploration of how our data is being used by the government spy services.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

6 stars. No, 7 stars!!!

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good book, each chapter is a different dive into how online data collection is being used in specific circumstances, by government agencies, in the war on terror, in policing, etc.

The book does a really good job at explaining the technical details at a 30,000 view, and for me never got too far into the details.

[Dave Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some time ago, I witnessed a demonstration that showed real-time data on a map, revealing the exact location of cars on the road and the radio stations their drivers were listening to. It was both fascinating and a little unsettling. Surprisingly, this level of data collection was just the beginning of what is possible.

The book, "Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State" by Byron Tau, explores the covert and intricate relationship between major tech companies and the U.S. government in establishing a pervasive surveillance network. This network, initially developed for use in counterterrorism efforts abroad, has gradually extended its reach to domestic soil, largely unnoticed by the general public.

Central to this surveillance system is the collection and analysis of vast amounts of data generated by individuals through their daily use of smartphones, apps, and digital platforms. Corporations such as Apple and Google assign unique advertising IDs to users, which track everything from geographic locations to browsing habits. This data, which is anonymized in name only, can be—and often is—purchased by the government from commercial data brokers. The data is then used to monitor and analyze consumer behavior, often without the user's explicit consent or awareness.

The book also sheds light on the role of data brokers—entities that have been evolving since the 1960s—from collecting basic consumer information to today’s highly sophisticated data ecosystems that include social media, location tracking, and niche datasets. These brokers not only cater to corporate demands but also increasingly fulfill governmental needs, blurring the lines between private sector data collection and state surveillance.

Through historical references and modern-day examples, Tau illustrates how this alliance between tech and government agencies bypasses traditional legal safeguards meant to protect citizen privacy. He delves into the implications of metadata collection, open-source intelligence, and the role of social media in this new surveillance landscape. The book paints a concerning picture of a society where every digital interaction could potentially be monitored, analyzed, and exploited by those with access to the data.

Five Takeaways

1. The Covert Collection of Advertising Data: The U.S. government funds and utilizes data collected through commercial advertising channels, initially for counterterrorism but increasingly for domestic surveillance. The data is "anonymized" but easily de-anonymized to track individuals' movements and behaviors.

2. The Rise of Data Brokers: Since the 1960s, data brokers have evolved from collecting basic demographic information to amassing detailed profiles through social media, location tracking, and niche datasets. These brokers serve both corporate and governmental interests.

3. Geolocation as a Surveillance Tool: Location data from smartphones is highly valuable and is used by both businesses and governments to track movements, analyze consumer behavior, and even plan law enforcement operations.

4. The Illusion of Anonymity: Despite claims of anonymization, the data collected from digital devices, particularly through apps and social media, can easily reveal personal identities and locations. This information is often used without the user’s knowledge.

5. Metadata's Power: The book highlights the extensive use of metadata, such as phone records and social media activity, by intelligence agencies to conduct surveillance. Metadata, though not protected under the Fourth Amendment, can provide detailed insights into an individual’s life.

We share our data everyday whether we want to or not. But this book illustrates how this leads to constant surveillance. The relationship between technology companies and government agencies, means that this data is stored and used. All of this operates happens largely without public scrutiny or oversight.

Favorite Excerpts
"...the technology embedded in our phones, our computers, our cars, and our homes is part of a vast ecosystem of data collection and analysis primarily aimed at understanding and in some cases manipulating our consumer behavior."

"During World War II, U.S. census data—collected under promises of confidentiality—was used to identify and round up Japanese Americans for internment. Such a turn of events might strike you as unthinkable in the twenty-first century. But once-unimaginable scenarios have been occurring with frequency now in our polarized politics. What’s stopping history from repeating itself?"

"This book aims to remind everyone that in our role as both consumers and voters, we Americans still do have a say in what kind of society we want to build and live in. We have a choice in what we buy with our hard-earned money and whom we elect to represent us at all levels of government. And there are companies invested in building privacy into technology; there are business models other than advertising or data harvesting for consumer services and technologies."

[C · Rating 4 out of 5]

A terrifying look at the amount of data collected by tech companies and shared with data brokers and others, and the various secretive ways the US government procures that data, even about American citizens.

Tau interviewed several people currently or formerly in the US government, including high-ranking officials.

Notes
The Ugly Stepchild
Publicly available information (PAI): social media or other unclassified information. Once it's used in intelligent report, it becomes decent.

Success Lies in the Secrecy
The US government and foreign governments collect data about Americans from ad exchanges via shell companies, intermediaries.

Going Gray
Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems (TPMS) transmissions aren't encrypted, and can be used for tracking cars, because each tire broadcasts a unique ID.

Location data can't be anonymized because each person's movements are unique (unless someone else is with you 24/7).

Rhamnousia, the Goddess Who Punishes Hubris
DEA and NSA can seemingly detect burner phones using big data. If 1 phone is turned off at same time and in same place as another phone is turned on, they can potentially be associated.

The Apps Are Not What They Seem
How China can use TikTok against US
• Collect behavioral data on Americans.
• Collect data about relationships between Americans.
• Collect biometric data on Americans.
• Influence global public opinion and online discourse.

The Privilege of Disappearing
AltOS is a secure Android ROM created by CIS Mobile.

The [US] government knows the dangers a phone can pose to its own operations, officials, and service members. But it increasingly takes the position that it wants it citizens trackable at all times and that anything that thwarts that is suspect, dangerous, and possible illegal.

Epilogue-The Man Behind the Counter

Citizens … must decide how much we want to be tracked and for what purposes. What does it mean to be unable to walk through the world without being observed, tracked, and analyzed and having that data sold to hundreds of thousands of strangers—in corporations and government security services alike?

Appendix-An Ordinary Person's Guide to Digital Privacy
• Control your own data. Use local storage whenever possible. When you use cloud storage, use zero knowledge and to end encryption.
• Encrypt, but more importantly, delete. Keep only data you truly need. Use a femoral messaging, delete all the messages and social posts.
• Review settings and permissions to maximize privacy.
• Read terms of service, privacy policies. See what they say about sharing data.
• Use obscurity and anonymity tech (ad blocker, privacy-friendly browser, firewall, VPN). Consider paying with cash.
• Be smart. Opt out whenever possible. Be skeptical and guarded.
• Pay for software and services so companies don't so readily seek to monetize in other ways, such as selling data.

Further resources
• Extreme Privacy: What It Takes To Disappear by Michael Bazzell
• https://inteltechniques.com/
• Data and Goliath by Bruce Schneier
• https://www.schneier.com/
• Cyber Privacy: Who Has Your Data and Why You Should Care by April Falcon Doss
• https://ssd.eff.org/
• https://www.privacyguides.org/
• https://www.privacytools.io/
• https://thenewoil.org/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/

Key Concepts and Definitions
Though you can reset your mobile advertising ID (MAID), advertisers can easily match your new MAID to your old one(s) based on behavior attributes or movement patterns.

[Ryan McCloskey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Byron Tau strikes me as a talented journalist--and this was an enjoyable read for his first outing. I've liked his reporting at WSJ, and a lot of the more interesting pieces made an appearance here, but woven within his own personal narrative of "finding his/this beat" and digging deeper into it. But I felt in the back half it started to become more of an anthology of collected works--and his personal perspective became less interesting to me--largely because I felt it wasn't totally coherent. He would pearl clutch around the US government's purchasing of commercial data, or the vendors providing it--but then pivot to say "yeah and China's TikTok is a location data gathering machine and we really need to be able to match it, or combat it."

I think in reflection, he lays out a lot of the problems about privacy and security that have cropped up since Cambridge Analytica (we came to realize that we were the product sold by the free platforms we used) but doesn't really offer anything particularly new in the way of commentary, analysis, or advice from here on out. I think the particular focus on specific location data companies in the 2010s was interesting/new--but from a reader's high-level perspective it wasn't particularly revelatory. I think if Byron popped out this book in 2021 (at any time prior to Apple's 2021 "Ask to Share" location background tracking policy change) it would've been really REALLY powerful/interesting. If he had been able to dig more into TikTok concerns, give insight into Big Tech companies played with the government in the 10s, how AI "engines" might be a new government-contracted hover of its citizens' personal/consumer data--that could've tied it more to the present, or gave it more of an UMPH factor.

I found myself comparing it consistently to "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends" by Nicole Perlroth. Which tells a similar tale about government nurturing (and ultimately losing control) over the zero-day hack market via government contractors/DC-tech scene. I liked that one more, but maybe it's just because the subject/risks are much less consumer-facing/known.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Back in the days of Hitler, Stalin and Mao, one of the main things that kept the "total" out of totalitarian was the impossibility of spying on all of the people all of the time. Then after 9/11 we found out that with advanced technology, the NSA could listen to pretty much all of our telephone calls, intercept all of our emails and use big computers to scan all of it for information of interest. There were some legal constraints, and they were looking for specific things that most of us didn't have to worry about, but the technology for a massive surveillance state was there. Now we can yearn for the good old days when we only had to worry about phone calls and emails and could still have a measure of privacy in most of our lives. Today we go through the world with smartphones, smart watches, internet connected cars, tap enabled cards, smart doorbells, voice enabled digital assistants and internet of things devices that are beacons telling the world about every place we go, every way that we communicate with each other and everything in which we express any interest. Most of this is done for business reasons by companies that want to sell stuff, but police and other sorts of government snoops have easy access to this information. Short of living in a cave without electricity, avoiding the surveillance is nearly impossible. It's a good thing that I don't do very much that I care about hiding from anybody and that I stay away from social media other than Goodreads, but it still feels creepy and wrong. I'd be happy to pay incrementally more for the apps and technology I care about, if they would just leave me alone and erase anything that isn't absolutely necessary to provide the services that I want.

[Charles Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

90%

Of all the security and advertisement books that I have read telling me about how much the government tracks you, their level and web of information, it was not explicitly informed to me about all of the things that were informed in this book. Car tires, that's a surprising thing. I didn't know that car tires were technologically innovated to tell me and snitch on things. That's bizarre. Bluetooth seems kind of obvious. Another one I didn't know is that the government, first of all, would make shell companies to purchase data so that they're like, yeah, we're a business, even though they're not a business. They still probably do that. Now they buy it from other people that are specifically designed to find data, what advertising within metadata. I look at metadata from customers to try to figure out who's the best person to inform about products, but tracking your specific details down to this level, absolutely insane. Extremely invasive. It gives me some very strong misgivings about the government and companies involved with them. I did not know that the government could buy data about individuals and use companies to find such weird, crappy things. Thank goodness that Apple has made it impossible for themselves to do that. Linux is another attractive proposition that I've looked at several times and will likely migrate to. Absolutely eye-opening, very deeply descriptive and informative to points that are not pointed out in mainstream literature.

[Matthew Shinker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cybersecurity researchers don your tinfoil hats because this book is the real deal. If you want a glimpse, although not the most technical glimpse, under the covers of the modern surveillance state we live than look no further. This book does an excellent job of explaining how after 9/11 occurred everything changed. The military/industrial/law enforcement complex now uses smartphone data to track all of us, all the time.

Tau does an excellent job explaining that location data can't be anonymized. If your smartphone sleeps on your bed-side stand each night, then your location data can easily be tracked back to you. Additionally many apps, so you might not even use, have access to waaaay too many permissions on our phones - GPS location data, contacts, camera and video galleries, etc. Why does a Mahjong app need permission to access all that data? Well if it's a free app, then you're the product and your data gets packaged, ships and sold to marketing, third-party vendors and onto 3-letter government agencies. It's a shame, but it's true.

As a cybersecurity guy I need to help protect my clients, friends and family from prying eyes.

[Nick · Rating 3 out of 5]

The majority of the book talks about the ways that location data from data brokers is packaged and sold to different government entities from different apps and SDKs in order to surveill Americans without our knowledge or consent. The author does a good job of telling a thorough and detailed picture of how this works.

I do think the book's almost sole focus on location data leaves out a lot of other technologies which could be placed as a proxy for location or other metrics. And although the book teased how the same tech could be used in the realm of public health and then never actually got to it. Obviously having location information can be useful to people, which is why they enable it in apps. But the author really never gets to that point.

[Kristopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5* (Audio) Excellent dive into the history of corporate consumer surveillance, government sponsored surveillance of citizens, and how the lines have blurred in our burgeoning and continually evolving digital age. I understand that by the very nature of this being a published work that events and information closer to the release of the book being less fleshed out than the others, but it does make me desire for something more ongoing that details the newest related developments. Good thing he’s a journalist we can keep reading and following! I do wish the epilogue’s “how-to” was a bit more comprehensive.

[Niamh · Rating 5 out of 5]

A distinctive take on the growth of the private data broker industry in the US which reveals how personal data gathered for consumer purposes ends up being used by law enforcement or intelligence agencies for surveillance purposes. Charts the inception of the data industry and like Zuboff, gives a good account of the seismic shift that 9/11 brought about in terms of its relationship to government. Also makes a good and counter-intuitive argument that intelligence agencies actually have to jump through quite a lot of hoops before using private data sources on US citizens, while police forces and smaller agencies operate with a lot less oversight.