If you are reading these words on a Kindle, or Google Books, or a Nook, they are measuring how long it takes for you to read each word, where you stop to take a break, and what you highlight. If surveillance didn’t catch you before buying this book, it probably did afterwards.

Fit the bill? The main objective of this book is to empower you, but most similar uses of your data will disempower you. Or you might be an ‘advocate’, someone worried about social issues and politically engaged. The trading of personal data as a business model is increasingly being exported to all institutions in society – the surveillance society, or surveillance capitalism.1 To reach you, I had to go through surveillance capitalism – I’m sorry.2 How did you become aware of this book? Can you remember how you first heard about it, or where you saw an ad for it? You might’ve been tagged by some platform or another as a ‘pioneer’, someone who is on the lookout for knowledge and new experiences. Much of that data is personal data – data about you. The internet is primarily funded by the collection, analysis, and trade of data – the data economy. Reclaiming privacy is the only way we can regain control of our lives and our societies. Their power stems from us, from you, from your data.

They want to predict and influence our behaviour. They want to know who we are, what we think, where we hurt. They track and record all they can: our location, our communications, our internet searches, our biometric information, our social relations, our purchases, and much more. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you and me, and everyone we know. She is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics. Her academic work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, Nature Electronics, Nature Energy and Bioethics, among other journals.

Véliz has published articles in the Guardian, the New York Times, New Statesman, the Independent, Slate, and El País. She works on privacy, technology, moral and political philosophy, and public policy. Carissa Véliz P R I VA C Y I S P O W E R Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Dataĭata Vultures How Did We Get Here? Privacy Is Power Toxic Data Pulling the Plug What You Can DoĬonclusion Acknowledgements Notes References IndexĪbout the Author CARISSA VÉLIZ is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, and a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, University of Oxford.

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