They Know Everything About You: How Data-Collecting Corporations and Snooping Government Agencies Are Destroying Democracy - Hardcover

Scheer, Robert

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568584520 ISBN 13: 9781568584522

Publisher: Nation Books, 2015

Synopsis

They Know Everything About You is a groundbreaking exposé of how government agencies and tech corporations monitor virtually every aspect of our lives, and a fierce defense of privacy and democracy.

The revelation that the government has access to a vast trove of personal online data demonstrates that we already live in a surveillance society. But the erosion of privacy rights extends far beyond big government. Intelligence agencies such as the NSA and CIA are using Silicon Valley corporate partners as their data spies. Seemingly progressive tech companies are joining forces with snooping government agencies to create a brave new world of wired tyranny.

Life in the digital age poses an unprecedented challenge to our constitutional liberties, which guarantee a wall of privacy between the individual and the government. The basic assumption of democracy requires the ability of the individual to experiment with ideas and associations within a protected zone, as secured by the Constitution. The unobserved moment embodies the most basic of human rights, yet it is being squandered in the name of national security and consumer convenience.

Robert Scheer argues that the information revolution, while a source of public enlightenment, contains the seeds of freedom's destruction in the form of a surveillance state that exceeds the wildest dream of the most ingenious dictator. The technology of surveillance, unless vigorously resisted, represents an existential threat to the liberation of the human spirit.

About this title

About the Author

Robert Scheer is the editor-in-chief of the Webby Award–winning online magazine Truthdig, professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and co-host of Left, Right & Center, a weekly syndicated radio show broadcast from NPR's west coast affiliate, KCRW. In the 1960s, he was editor of the groundbreaking Ramparts magazine and later was national correspondent and columnist for the Los Angeles Times. Scheer is the author of nine books, including The Great American Stickup. He lives in Los Angeles.

Review

"Scheer acquits himself as a passionate advocate for privacy rights; you'd want him by your side at a protest." Los Angeles Times

"...Scheer powerfully connects the dots of our chilling Orwellian present, one in which privacy is considered a luxury, rather than a right." Publishers Weekly

"A vital piece of work that demands attention." Kirkus Reviews

Robert Scheer reminds us that privacy is everything the protector of our liberty, the guarantor of our personal autonomy, the fountainhead of our democracy and yet it's disappearing faster than an electronic blip moving at warp speed from your computer to the NSA. With clarity and precision, Scheer dissects the military-intelligence complex, showing it to be neither very secure nor very intelligent, but, rather, dangerous to us all.” Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy, University of California at Berkeley

They Know Everything About You is a brilliant book. Robert Scheer, who covered my 1971 trial after I released the Pentagon Papers, has been following privacy and surveillance issues for decades. He is a key voice and his book cogent, timely, and fascinating is an indispensable text for our time.” Daniel Ellsberg, author of Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers

About this edition

• Publisher: Nation Books
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1568584520
• ISBN 13: 9781568584522
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 272