Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of
American Democracy
by Charlie Savage
In 2002 Congress passed legislation that established the Department of
Homeland Security. Congress also provided the funding that made Homeland
Security the third largest agency in the federal Government. As a modest
check on the powers given to this new federal agency, Congress created a
privacy office and required that it publish regular reports about
privacy violations and compliance with federal privacy laws.
All of this would seem fairly straightforward, but for the fact that the
current occupants of the White House resent Congressional authority. So
the President essentially rejected the reporting requirement, and the
agency that was putting cameras on city streets across America,
mandating national identity cards, and funding Orwellian “fusion
centers” ignored the privacy implications of its programs. One annual
report was delayed and later the President asserted in a signing
statement that he would construe the requirement for a privacy report, “in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to
supervise the unitary executive branch."
How did it get to the point that the President could choose which parts
of a law to follow and which parts of a law to ignore? That is the
question that Charlie Savage explores in this carefully argued and
thoroughly researched text on the reemergence of the imperial
presidency. Savage observes that Presidents of both parties have sought
expanded powers particularly during wartime. But President Bush's
campaign was backed by a small cadre of determined “presidentialists”
who used their knowledge of Washington and their high positions within
the administration to advance the goal of expanding Presidential powers.
Inherent powers of the President became exclusive powers of the
President. Signing statements that could provide interpretative material
for a court became definitive statements of the President's views of
constitutional authority. The “unitary executive” approached the powers
of a monarch, particularly during the six years that the President's
party controlled also the legislative and judicial branches of
government.
It may be tempting for the President's defenders to argue that much of
what the White House did was in direct response to 9-11, but Charlie
Savage's careful narrative destroys this myth. The aim to extend
Presidential powers long pre-dated the terrorist attacks. The use of
secrecy to reduce accountability was on the table with the Cheney energy
task force in the early days of the administration and continues with
current disputes about public access to information to evaluate the
effectives of the administration's education programs. And those who
remember Dick Cheney's contributions as chief of staff in the Ford
Administration know that he opposed open government laws almost thirty
years before he advised President Bush to limit public access to
information about government after 9-11. In other words, Cheney did not
respond to events of 9-11 with new rules on secrecy, but took the
occasion of 9-11 to establish long-sought secrecy rules.
What are consequences of the reemergence of the imperial presidency? The answer may be found in the book's title. “American democracy,” Savage suggests, is based on an effective means of checks and balances, not simply the ability to vote a leader out of office. Without this Constitutional system of accountability, American democracy is diminished.
- Marc Rotenberg
Price $25.99 (Little Brown & Co. 2007)
The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and
Transformed Our Culture
by John Battelle
By any measure, Google is remarkable company. As described in "The
Search" by industry legend John Battelle, Google combined clear purpose,
savvy technology, smart marketing, and clever business moves to become
the most dominant Internet firm and just about the most powerful company
the world has ever seen.
Battelle describes the early days with the cofounders scrounging up hardware at Stanford to store an ever larger database of Internet web links, on through the collaborations with advisors, the meals at Burger King, the meetings with investors, the bumpy IPO, and the subsequent stratospheric rise in valuation. There is discussion of the philosophy of web search, the significance of PageRank, and the implications of the semantic web.
Key to the success of Google's business model was the understanding that
the Internet is "a database of intentions." Whereas the traditional
business model for commercial advertising assumed that ads would be
linked to relevant content (for example, the ads for movies appear in
the Entertainment section of the local newspaper), Google's cofounders
realized that search alone was interest and that as search was refined,
advertising became more relevant. For web sites seeking to monetize
content and small businesses seeking to find an online audience,
Internet advertising was the answer. For Google and others, those clicks
turned into billions of dollars.
There is in the story of Google almost a celestial elegance in the
alignment of technical achievement and market success. As Google refined
its algorithms, its market share grew. The best and the brightest were
drawn to the company. In a short period, it transformed not only the
Internet but also popular culture.
But Google's dominance may not be all to the good, as a recent editorial
in The Economist suggests. As the writers for the British magazine
observe, Google has become "a custodian of a far wider and more intimate
range of information about individuals." The company "through the sheer
speed with which it accumulates the treasure of information" tests the
limits of what society may tolerate.
There is no doubt that the power of search and the rise of online advertising helped transform the Internet into the global digital agora that it has become. But Google has transformed as well. No longer focused simply on indexing web pages, the company offers almost every conceivable online service from apps and email to commerce engines and Google Earth, which with the most recent upgrade, now peers into the heavens. And every transaction is methodically tagged and recorded by Google for purposes still unknown.
Battelle's first report on Google was aptly titled "The Search." A sequel could well be named "The Searched."
- Marc Rotenberg
Price $7.95 (Penguin, 2005)
Complete Guide to Security and Privacy Metrics by Debra S. Herrmann
Measuring compliance with privacy and security standards has never been
an easy task. Many privacy principles are vague ("collection
limitation") and many well defined security requirements are largely
unrelated to significant privacy concerns. The law has also thrown up
its hands when it comes to measuring privacy harms. Privacy statues
typically designate a fixed amount for a privacy violation. Not
surprisingly, privacy and security do not fair well under a cost benefit
analysis. As a consequence, security breeches are widespread and
identity theft is, according to the Federal Trade Commission, the number
one concern of American consumers.
Enter this remarkably comprehensive, clearly written, and well organized
manual. Debra Herman has broad experience in IT development and system
evaluation in the federal government, and a deep regard for privacy
protection. Though the book is primarily directed toward IT managers, it
is well informed by privacy law and policy. The guide offers plenty of
checklists to evaluate key security factors. It also touches upon
several of the hot button privacy concerns, including problems with RFID
tags and the battles over the use of encryption.
For agency officials who are preparing a privacy impact assessment or privacy experts who want to learn more about the hard work of system security, the Complete Guide to Security and Privacy Metrics is an unbeatable resource.
-- Marc Rotenberg
Price $137.95 (Auerbach Publications, 2007)
Privacy on the Line, The Politics of Wiretapping and Encryption, Updated
and Expanded Edition by Whitfield Diffie and Susan Landau
This much-awaited update of Diffie and Landau's 1998 edition is greatly
appreciated by the privacy advocacy community. So much has happened in
the span of nine years: the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001;
public knowledge of government surveillance programs; increased use of
cryptography; and, the broad adoption of Internet-enabled communication
services.
The publication is a wonderful exploration of the history of
communication privacy and the efforts by the US government to conduct
sanctioned and unsanctioned surveillance of domestic communication.
Domestic surveillance first began as a means of acquiring information on
criminal activities and quickly moved to documenting people's engagement
in social or political activities and their exercise of constitutionally
protected rights to expression and assembly. The argument that the "Control of society is, in large part, control of communications," is
explained in detail by the authors as they walk the reader thought the
decades of various technologies, tactics, and rationales deployed by
government in its efforts to snoop.
The strongest recommendation for the book is its grasp of communication
technology and the issue of cryptography, which the authors propose is
the key factor that can make or break the privacy rights of
telecommunication users. The 1970s was the decade of enlightenment for
easy access by the public to affordable and practical cryptographic
tools. Diffie, Hellman, Merkle, Rivest, Shamir, Adelman, Feistel, all
made significant contributions to online banking and digital commerce.
According to Diffie and Landau, the National Security Agency's efforts
to hobble research and business opportunities presented the greater
obstacle to public access to good cryptographic tools.
One key lesson that is provided by "Privacy on the Line": electronic
surveillance is unlike any other form of spying because the intruder can
hide the fact that a message or communication has been compromised.
Diffie and Landau make it very clear that only amateurs attempting to
spy on modern telecommunication systems would make mistakes that would
tip-off the target, and the National Security Agency is no amateur. This
updated edition makes for a great read - academic in nature, but very
accessible for someone interested in understanding the current debate
over the President's various domestic surveillance programs headed by
the National Security Agency.
-- Lillie Coney
Walden's Computer Crimes and Digital Investigations is a comprehensive
treatment of computers and the criminal justice system. The book surveys
various ideas of "computer crime," relevant laws, the interaction
between technology and criminal procedure, international developmentsThe text is particularly useful for legal practitioners and well as law enforcement, security professionals and private investigators. The reader at each step will gain an understanding of the major principles and legal questions at play. The appendix includes the helpful Association of Chief of Police Officers Good Practice Guide for Computer based Electronic Evidence with lists of what should be seized, and some practical advice.
Walden, a professor of information and communications law at Queen Mary,
University of London, has a generally UK-focus, with the occasional
example from the US and other countries. Promising more, Walden
concludes the book: "Computer crimes and digital investigations will
comprise a substantial part of criminal policy, law and practice over
the coming years, as information becomes the cornerstone to the global
economy. To examine such developments and the evolving legal framework
will surely require a second edition."
-- Guilherme Roschke
In the updated edition of his text, Kuner sets out the difficulty of
expansion into EU markets for US businesses that have not taken the
message of data privacy protection seriously. US businesses intent on
exploiting the information age through new EU markets or creating moreAdditional complexity of EU data protection law comes from the range of
European entities that have jurisdiction over its enforcement. These
bodies are not equal in their ability to directly impact the bottom line
prospects for businesses, but exert some level of influence in the
shaping of data protection policy in Europe. Some might speculate that
in the new information age it would be easier to just offshore all data
collection, processing, and storage of data, but the author warns that
the Europeans have thought of that as well and the rules have a number
of pitfalls for those who attempt this approach.
Basic EU data protection requirements include: informing data subjects
of the purpose that information is being requested, justifying the need
to retain the information, making information on the data subject
available to them, protecting the information collected, and only using
the information for the purpose for which it was collected. In short,
the road to success in data protection is paved with a lot of planning,
thought, care, and well-established means of protecting the data
obtained on European Union citizens.
-- Lillie Coney
Price $250.50 (Oxford Press, 2007)
Petersen provides a comprehensive overview of surveillance and
information gathering devices, broken down into four major sections:
acoustic, electromagnetic, chemical & biological, and miscellaneous
surveillance. Each section then is further broken down into particular
chapters: "acoustic," for example includes aural listening devices as
well as sonar technology."Electromagnetic" includes not just radio, but
also radar, infrared, ultra-violet, and, of course, visual. The range of
devices and technologies covered is daunting -- the book covers overThe first chapter is an introduction to and an overview of surveillance technologies. From then on the chapters are modular - applying the same structure to the topic discussed. A chapter on a technology will include an introduction to science in the area; the kinds of surveillance that are done, the context it is used in, the origins and evolution, descriptions and functions; applications; problems and limitations; restrictions and regulations; privacy implications of use; and list of resources.
The traditional fields of surveillance are thoroughly covered. The audio surveillance chapter takes up 100 pages and is also supplemented by the 50 page radio surveillance chapter of the electromagnetic section. The history of wiretap technologies and law is covered. The legal developments have a United States centric angle. The implications discuss past abuses as well as the increasing presence of wiretaps.
For a non-traditional example, the chapter on animal surveillance covers
the use of animals as detectors, as research subjects, as assistants --
like seeing eye dogs, and as treatment indicators -- profiling
individuals by their treatment of animals. The limitations section
addresses the specific issues that animals face, such as narcotics
sniffing false positives, and the difficulty of relocation and
maintenance. The implications address the individual temperament of the
animals and arguments concerning animal rights. Further resources are
pointed to in the form of organizations working for animal rights, for
law enforcement animals, assistance animals.
The book serves best as a professional or student reference. It should be consulted before one begins a new venture analyzing an area of surveillance. It quickly allows the reader to gain a basic knowledge in the scientific workings of a technology, its history, legal regime, main privacy implications and resources.
-- Guilherme Roschke
Price $99.95 (Auerbach Publications, 2007)
Walter Kirn's novel, originally published in online serial form on
Slate.com, presents a view not of the world as it could be, but rather
the world as it may already be. The Unbinding's characters make and
remake themselves in online and offline forms, in order to entice or
repel others, as the case may be.
Kent Selkirk, the novel's main character, works at an omnipresent
subscriber service called AidSat, where he coaches clients through all
manner of life situations, from relationship advice to emergency
response. Through the AidSat network Kent has a wealth of information at
his fingertips, as well as the power to passively observe any client,
their conversations, their vital signs, and their movements. Abuse of
this power is particularly powerful given that online research is
accorded more trust than face-to-face interaction and observation.
Society and its players rely on two assumptions: that data doesn't lie,
and that the aggregation of enough isolated pieces can paint a complete
picture that satisfies any purpose, be it employment, dating, or
criminal risk assessment.
The online form of the novel allows the author to incorporate real-time
events, drawing even closer the parallel between Kirn's “fictional”
world and ours. In a bold statement about the current social concept of
privacy, Kirn writes, “They've grown up believing in the orbiting eye,
the subdermal microchip, the circling drone, and they're no more afraid
of them than they are of moonlight. Perhaps that's because they're born
onstage, these creatures, and the first thing they see is the snout of
Daddy's Handycam. . . In time, they have nothing inside them that hasn't
been outside.” As the watchers become the watched, a race to gather the
most information on others ensues, leaving one problem for both the
characters and the reader: which information represents the truth?
-- Allison Knight
Price $9.95 (Random House, 2006)
"Illusions of Security" provides a comprehensive, detailed, and
disturbing review of a decade of mass surveillance activities, with
particular focus on the worldwide shift in investigative techniques in
the post-9/11 world. The real-life impacts of these programs come into
sharp focus in Webb's many examples of personal experiences, including
the story of Maher Arar, the Canadian who, based on Canadian and
American intelligence misinformation, was detained in the U.S. and sentFrom this "cautionary tale of our times," Webb proceeds to outline the
various mass surveillance systems and proposals that have recently come
into existence in the US and around the globe. The programs, ranging
from new passport requirements, RFID technology, and biometrics, to the
tracking of financial information, air travel information, and
communications monitoring all demonstrate a shift in law enforcement
towards "preemption of risk" that given large enough amounts of data,
patterns of culpability can be discovered from innocuous details. A
preemption model of security reverses the presumption of innocence and
wrongly assumes that criminal and terrorist activity could be curtailed
by increased access to infinite quantities of information. The
preemption model has allowed governments to manipulate, in the name of
preventative policing, legislative constraints on government
surveillance, and has been used to justify such extreme measures as
extraordinary rendition, outsourcing of interrogation and torture in the
race to gather information.
Ironically, Webb's analysis succeeds where the very programs she is
describing fails: her ability to gather dispersed and incomplete clues
on the scope and extent of various surveillance initiatives unveils
patterns of disproportionate erosion of civil liberties in exchange for
few law enforcement benefits. As the author states, "Sifting through an
ocean of flawed information with a net of bias and faulty logic, the
initiatives described in this book yield a tidal wave of false leads and
useless information." The consequences of such false leads, says Webb,
is far more serious than inefficiencies in intelligence operations.
Trawling vast quantities of largely irrelevant data wrongly diverts
resources from more effective investigative techniques, exacerbates
global insecurity, and threatens our liberty and democracy.
-- Allison Knight
Price $11.50 (City Lights Books, 2007)
In "A Crowd of One," John Henry Clippinger, an expert on identity and
Senior Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard
Law School, says his motivation for the book comes from the traditional
model for influence, force, and "its instant power and its limitations."In understanding these connections, we can understand the "social
commerce" that is created by our increasingly digitized world. In social
commerce, a system where you must have trust and exchange, your
reputation is your identity, Clippinger says. He points to eBay and its
notion of reputation: buyers rate a seller's claims about an item, speed
of delivery - giving feedback the seller's trustworthiness. The
importance of the eBay model, and why the site remains a success, is the "genuine insight into the mechanics of how people formed their
identities within communities where their actions were visible." The
feedback ratings allowed members to achieve a sort of social status and
influence. But one must be careful, because untrustworthy people could
role-play and take advantage of the system by masking their true
identities, also evidenced by eBay's feedback system. Some eBay scammers
will create many small-cost transactions - selling camera batteries at a
low price to a hundred people - and increase their trustworthiness by
gathering many good ratings from these buyers. Then, the seller will
list several high-cost items - expensive, high-end digital cameras - and
abscond with the money from the sales without delivering the items. The
buyers bid on the high-cost items, in part under the influence of the
seller's "good reputation" under the eBay ratings system.
Much of human activity is being moved in and out of virtual worlds and this will only increase, Clippinger says. He believes that this digital age, where we can build communities of shared interests based on new ideas of reputation and identity, is the next Enlightenment. These theories of influence and social transaction will allow us to continuously evolve new systems of identity management, as distinct individuals within a social structure of crowds.
-- Melissa Ngo
Price $18.95 (PublicAffairs 2007)
"The Internet has dramatically altered the landscape of crime and
national security, creating new threats, such as identity theft,
computer viruses, and cyberattacks. Moreover, because cybercrimes are
often not limited to a single site or nation, crime scenes themselves
have changed. Consequently, law enforcement must confront these new
dangers and embrace novel methods of prevention, as well as produce new
tools for digital surveillance - which can jeopardize privacy and civil
liberties. Cybercrime brings together leading experts in law, criminal
justice, and security studies to describe crime prevention and security
protection in the electronic age. Ranging from new government
requirements that facilitate spying to new methods of digital proof, the
book is essential to understand how criminal law-and even crime
itself-have been transformed in our networked world."
Contributors: Jack M. Balkin, Susan W. Brenner, Daniel E. Geer, Jr.,
James Grimmelmann, Emily Hancock, Beryl A. Howell, Curtis E.A. Karnow,
Eddan Katz, Orin S. Kerr, Nimrod Kozlovski, Helen Nissenbaum, Kim A.
Taipale, Lee Tien, Shlomit Wagman, and Tal Zarsky
Thompson understands technology, and knows that it raises issues not
simply about the inventions themselves, but about how society uses, and
forms around, new technologies. He also knows that surveillance is being
put in place in democratic countries by design: while many “think of a
surveillance society as something sinister and of dictatorships
reminiscent of Cold War countries such as Russia and East Berlin… the
surveillance society is more a result of the modern organizational
practices of businesses, government and the military." The "hidden face" of technology then, is represented by the people directing, controlling,
and using technology to monitor. Individuals may or may not see the
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tag on an item in the store;
however, the tag allows a system to surreptitiously track and profile
individuals based on that RFID tag. Thompson gives the example of a
system that outputs - in real time -- the percentage probability that
someone in a given store is planning on stealing a packet of Mach3
razors! We may see the technology, we may be told it exists, and we may
be told of its consequences.
The book's sixteen chapters each cover a different privacy topic, such
as: video surveillance; biometrics; communications and email monitoring;
cell phones; and supermarket loyalty cards. He describes the various
stakeholder interests in deploying each technology, such as the
constable that wants cameras reading license plates every few miles on
the road. Thompson gives examples, real or imagined, of the threats to
privacy and security that these systems create. Each chapter describes
the technology and the threats faced in straightforward terms, and
provides URLs for resources on each topic. Thompson also adds a quick
overview of privacy in Britain. The book serves both as a comprehensive
introduction for beginners as well as a useful resource for those with
more experience in privacy issues.
-- Guilherme Roschke
Price $23.75 (Frogeye Publications 2006)
Who Controls the Internet: Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
“Is the Internet truly "flattening" the modern world? Will national
boundaries crumble beneath the ever-increasing volume of Internet
traffic? Goldsmith and Wu, both professors of law (Goldsmith at Harvard,
Wu at Columbia), think not, and they present an impressive array of
evidence in their favor. The authors argue national governments will
continue to maintain their sovereignty in the age of the Internet,
largely because of economics: e-businesses - even giants such as Yahoo,
Google and eBay - need governmental support in order to function. When
Yahoo, an American company, was tried in French court for facilitating
the auctioning of Nazi paraphernalia in violation of French law, the
company was eventually forced to comply with local laws or risk losing
the ability to operate in France. As eBay grew into an Internet
powerhouse, its "feedback" system could not keep up with cunning con
artists, so it hired hundreds of fraud prevention specialists (known as "eBay cops"). Goldsmith and Wu begin with an overview of the Internet's
early days, replete with anecdotes and key historical chapters that will
be unknown to many readers, but their book quickly introduces its main
contention: that existing international law has the power to control the
Internet, a conclusion web pundits, cyberlaw specialists and courts
across the globe will inevitably challenge. Wu's and Goldsmith's account
of the power struggle between the Utopian roots of the Internet and the
hegemony of national governments is a timely chronicle of a history
still very much in the works.”
Price $28.00 (Oxford University Press 2006)
Identity Crisis: How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood by
Jim Harper
This book offers a snapshot of the identification landscape, where we
have been, where we are, and where we might choose to go. Harper's book
provides a great outline of the issues surrounding identification as
well as a glossary of terms and definitions to get a novice up to speed.
He breaks down identification categories into three areas: something you
are (color of hair, height, weight), something you know (mother's maiden
name, SSN, birth date), and something you have (access card, attire, or
other token). Each chapter begins with an amusing or interesting piece
of history or instance where identity and identification was relevant.
The underlying theme of the book is the value of identity and the
advantages of identification in situations where it is beneficial to the
person.
Harper makes some important observations about risk assessment analysis
to determine the likelihood and the consequences of system failures.
Having predetermined the level of risk that a system can withstand and
the probability of success helps to develop balance in identification
systems that encourages secure systems that are still useful in a
practical commercial sense.
Harper distinguishes between government and private sector
identification systems and notes that in government bad systems tend to
be rewarded, while identification systems used by commercial entities
have incentives to weed out bad systems of identification. Harper
concludes that promoting the ability of the marketplace to reward good
systems of identification, and penalize bad systems of identification
may be the best road to follow. However, the book offers only mild
treatment of the willingness of the private sector to open its identity
systems to government agencies upon request. The book is well written
and a great read with lots of insightful and humorous observations about
identification and identification systems such as how they came into
being and how they are used in large and small ways in our daily life.
We are now in the digital information age and being aware of these
important considerations about identity and identification systems is
everyone's concern.
-- Lillie Coney
Price $22.95 (Cato Institute 2006)
Digital Destiny: New Media and the Future of Democracy by Jeff Chester
It comes as no surprise that communications lobby groups have ensured
that they are better funded, better organized, and better positioned to
shape media policy than their civil society counterparts. What is
shocking is the degree to which industry goals been achieved through
this tightly knit network of actors, and the resounding silence that has
resulted. Jeff Chester's book, Digital Destiny: New Media and the future
of Democracy, presents a thoroughly detailed look at how the “media
crisis” has been largely and deliberately ignored, or at least kept from
public scrutiny. Chester traces the contacts and credentials of nearly
every policy player to big industry ties, and states that the Federal
Communications Commission and others have been engaged in a dishonest
intellectual effort in their research of the issues and (lack of)
regulation. According to Chester, the history of print, radio, and then
television monopolization threatens to repeat itself in the formulation
of Internet policy:
"That the self-serving interests of a few giants could end up threatening the potential of the Internet to serve democracy and fair competition illustrates the corruption and intellectual bankruptcy of US communications policymaking. Industry and its political supporters have hijacked the policy process, using the rhetoric of deregulation, to relegate the public into the passive role of consumers, reduced to whether they might have more channels to watch or pay a few cents less for them."
Chester responds with a call to arms for activists working on community broadband, equitable access, nondiscriminatory internet, noncommercial commons, electoral communications, and privacy to continue to organize in order to guarantee a brighter future for the democracy of new media.
-- Allison Knight
Price $16.95 (The New Press 2007)
Encyclopedia of Privacy (in 2 volumes) edited by William G. Staples
The Encyclopedia of Privacy takes a comprehensive look at the issue of
privacy in the United States today and throughout history. Edited by
William G. Staples, professor and chair of the Department of Sociology
at the University of Kansas, the Encyclopedia of Privacy is a useful
tool for laypersons and experts alike. Its 226 detailed but
accessibly-written entries, authored by over 100 privacy scholars and
experts, include topics as general as wiretapping and as specific as
Carnivore software. The volumes also provide summaries of key cases,
brief biographies of notable personalities, a chronology of major
privacy-related events, and a short section on general privacy
resources. Each entry also provides a list of resources for further
study.
-- Allison Knight
Price $221.75 (Greenwood Press 2007)
Privacy Protection for E-Services by George Yee
"There is a deep need for privacy education and technology with which to
educate the e-services industry, and provide it the tools to build
privacy preserving e-services. Privacy Protection for E-Services
fulfills this need by reporting on the latest advances in privacy
protection issues and technologies for e-services, covering important
material, such as: consumer empowerment, assessing privacy risks,
security technologies needed for privacy protection, systems for privacy
policy enforcement, and even methods for assessing privacy technologies.
'Privacy Protection for E-Services' is a must-read for consumers,
educators, researchers, designers, and developers who are interested in
the protection of consumer privacy for Internet services."
Brave New Ballot: The Battle to Safeguard Democracy in the Age of Electronic Voting by Aviel Rubin
Dr. Aviel Rubin is a Professor of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins
University and an advocate for electronic voting technology reform. His
book recounts his evolution from seeing electronic voting security as an
interesting academic or research problem, to a serious threat to our
nation's democracy. Dr. Rubin along with other computer technologists
have brought their knowledge about computer system vulnerabilities to
the debate on modernizing elections. A few years ago, Dr. Rubin
published a critical report about Diebold's AccuVote-TS voting
technology sold to the state of Maryland. The book lays out the case
that, when the largest supplier of paperless electronic voting systems,
Diebold Election Systems, was presented with evidence that one of its
most popular voting models had serious security flaws, they attacked the
messenger. Diebold's reaction to the report was to unleash a personal
and professional attack against Dr. Rubin.
For those who think that the debate about electronic voting technology
is just a polite discussion and not a battle -- read Dr. Rubin's book.
This is a great book for those interested in learning about one of the
many heroes who labored to speak truth to the powers that be and move
the issue of electronic voting technology security from the notice of
technologists to front page news.
-- Lillie Coney
Price $16.95 (Morgan Road 2006)
Digital Fortress by Dan Brown
In this novel, Dan Brown explores the world of NSA cryptography through a suspenseful plot that finds the NSA's secret, most effective code-breaking computer in the middle of a hostage situation. A former NSA employee has developed a code that the NSA, and all its brute-force technology cannot break. If the code were made accessible to the public, it would ostensibly cripple the U.S. intelligence efforts.
While this novel is a somewhat predictable, it delves into the debate as to whether national security necessitates the surrender of personal privacy in the United States.Although it is written from the viewpoint of the NSA, the author presents arguments, generally through sarcastic references to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, that the total erosionof the American people's privacy is not necessary to fight terrorism.
Dan Brown is also the author of "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels and
Demons."
-- Courtney Barclay
Price: $7.99 (St. Martin's Press 2004)
Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment: A History of Search and Seizure, 1789-1868"
by Andrew E. Taslitz
"The modern law of search and seizure permits warrantless searches that ruin the citizenry's trust in law enforcement, harms minorities, and embraces an individualistic notion of the rights that it protects, ignoring essential roles that properly-conceived protections of privacy, mobility, and property play in uniting Americans. Many believe the Fourth Amendment is a poor bulwark against state tyrannies, particularly during the War on Terror.
"Historical amnesia has obscured the Fourth Amendment's positive aspects, and Andrew E. Taslitz rescues its forgotten history in Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment, which includes two novel arguments. First, that the original Fourth Amendment of 1791—born in political struggle between the English and the colonists—served important political functions, particularly in regulating expressive political violence. Second, that the Amendment's meaning changed when the Fourteenth Amendment was created to give teeth to outlawing slavery, and its focus shifted from primary emphasis on individualistic privacy notions as central to a white democratic polis to enhanced protections for group privacy, individual mobility, and property in a multi-racial republic.
"With an understanding of the historical roots of the Fourth Amendment, suggests Taslitz, we can upend negative assumptions of modern search and seizure law, and create new institutional approaches that give political voice to citizens and safeguard against unnecessary humiliation and dehumanization at the hands of the police."
Price: $55.95 (New York University Press 2006)
"Privacy, Information, and Technology" by Daniel J. Solove, Marc Rotenberg, and Paul Schwarz
"This short paperback, developed from the casebook, 'Information Privacy Law,' contains key cases and materials focusing on privacy issues related to information technology, databases, and cyberspace. Topics covered include government surveillance, privacy and access to public records, government access to personal information, data mining, identity theft, consumer privacy, financial privacy, and more."
Price: $35.95 (Aspen Publishers 2006)
"Stealing Democracy: the New Politics of Voter Suppression" by Spencer Overton
"DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice" by David Lazer
This is a wonderful read both for political season junkies and those who would like to take a peek behind the curtain of our nation's most fundamental democratic institution--the public election. The book's first chapter is an eye-opening tour of the election process that will dissuade you of any notion that "one person, one vote" has ever been the goal of public elections. Beyond just the messy conclusion of the 2000 Florida presidential election, "Stealing Democracy" instills a greater appreciation of the efforts of inside political partisans to prevent change from happening, and the monumental efforts that voting rights advocates have made to expand the franchise to minorities, women, youth, and new residents.
In the long history of criminal justice, no technology has had the impact of DNA collection and analysis. According to the FBI, there are now over three and half million profiles in the national Combined DNA Index System. Fifteen years ago, CODIS was a pilot project involving only twelve forensic laboratories.
Experts say that DNA analysis offers a unique ability to determine guilt and innocence. Prosecutors increasingly rely on DNA evidence to make their case and to solve unsolved crimes. DNA evidence has also been used by criminal defense attorneys to prove the innocence of those who have been wrongly convicted. DNA testing has been used successfully by groups such as the Innocence Project to exonerate more than 170 wrongly convicted individuals, some of whom were on death row and imprisoned for decades.
"Stealing Democracy: the New Politics of Voter Suppression": Price: $19.95 (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006)
"DNA and the Criminal Justice System: The Technology of Justice": Price: $17.95 (MIT Press 2004)
"The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom"
by Yochai Benkler
"With the radical changes in information production that the Internet has introduced, we stand at an important moment of transition, says Yochai Benkler in this thought-provoking book. The phenomenon he describes as social production is reshaping markets, while at the same time offering new opportunities to enhance individual freedom, cultural diversity, political discourse, and justice. But these results are by no means inevitable: a systematic campaign to protect the entrenched industrial information economy of the last century threatens the promise of today's emerging networked information environment.
In this comprehensive social theory of the Internet and the networked information economy, Benkler describes how patterns of information, knowledge, and cultural production are changing, and shows that the way information and knowledge are made available can either limit or enlarge the ways people can create and express themselves. He describes the range of legal and policy choices that confront us and maintains that there is much to be gained, or lost, by the decisions we make today."
Price: $40.00 (Yale University Press 2006)
"The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture"
by John Battelle
"What does the world want? According to John Battelle, a company that answers that question — in all its 
shades of meaning — can unlock the most intractable riddles of business and arguably of human culture itself. And for the past few years, that's exactly what Google has been doing.
Jumping into the game long after Yahoo, Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, and other pioneers, Google offered a radical new approach to search, redefined the idea of viral marketing, survived the dot com crash, and pulled off the largest and most talked-about initial public offering in the history of Silicon Valley.
But The Search offers much more than the inside story of Google's triumph. It's also a big-picture book about the past, present, and future of search technology and the enormous impact it's starting to have on marketing, media, pop culture, dating, job hunting, international law, civil liberties, and just about every other sphere of human interest.
More than any of its rivals, Google has become the gateway to instant knowledge. Hundreds of millions of people use it to satisfy their wants, needs, fears, and obsessions, creating an enormous artifact that Battelle calls the Database of Intentions. Somewhere in Google's archives, for instance, you can find the agonized research of a gay man with AIDS, the silent plotting of a would-be bomb maker, and the anxiety
of a woman checking out her blind date. Combined with the databases of thousands of other search-driven businesses, large and small, it all adds up to a gold mine of information that powerful organizations (including the government) will want to get their hands on."
Price: $25.95 (Portfolio 2005)
Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge
"Robert Gu is a recovering Alzheimer's patient. The world that he
remembers was much as we know it today. Now, as he regains his faculties
through a cure developed during the years of his near-fatal decline, he
discovers that the world has changed and so has his place in it.
...
With knowledge comes risk. When Robert begins to re-train at Fairmont
High, learning with other older people what is second nature to Miri and
other teens at school, he unwittingly becomes part of a wide-ranging
conspiracy to use technology as a tool for world domination.
In a world where every computer chip has Homeland Security built-in,
this conspiracy is something that baffles even the most sophisticated
security analysts, including Robert's son and daughter-in law, two top
people in the U.S. military. And even Miri, in her attempts to protect
her grandfather, may be entangled in the plot.
As Robert becomes more deeply involved in conspiracy, he is shocked to
learn of a radical change planned for the UCSD Geisel Library; all the
books there, and worldwide, would cease to physically exist. He and his
fellow re-trainees feel compelled to join protests against the change.
With forces around the world converging on San Diego, both the
conspiracy and the protest climax in a spectacular moment as unique and
satisfying as it is unexpected. This is science fiction at its very
best, by a master storyteller at his peak."
Price: $25.95 (Tor Books 2006)
The Visible Employee: Using Workplace Monitoring and Surveillance to Protect Information Assets-Without Compromising Employee Privacy or Trust by Jeffrey M. Stanton
"For business owners, managers, and IT staff interested in learning how
to effectively and ethically monitor and influence workplace behavior,
this guide is a roadmap to ensuring security without risking employee
privacy or trust. The misuse of information systems by wired
workers—either through error or by intent—is discussed in detail, as are
possible results such as leaked or corrupted data, crippled networks,
lost productivity, legal problems, or public embarrassment. This
analysis of an extensive four-year research project conducted by the
authors covers not only a range of security solutions for at-risk
organizations but also the perceptions and attitudes of employees toward
workplace surveillance."
Price: $15.95 (Information Today 2006)
Who Controls the Internet? Illusions of a Borderless World by Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu
"Is the Internet erasing national borders? Will the future of the Net be
set by Internet engineers, rogue programmers, the United Nations, or
powerful countries? Who's really in control of what's happening on the
Net? In this provocative new book, Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu tell the
fascinating story of the Internet's challenge to governmental rule in
the 1990s, and the ensuing battles with governments around the world.
It's a book about the fate of one idea: that the Internet might liberate
us forever from government, borders, and even our physical selves. We
learn of Google's struggles with the French government and Yahoo's
capitulation to the Chinese regime; of how the European Union sets
privacy standards on the Net for the entire world; and of eBay's
struggles with fraud and how it slowly learned to trust the FBI. In a
decade of events the original vision is uprooted, as governments time
and time again assert their power to direct the future of the Internet.
The destiny of the Internet over the next decades, argue Goldsmith and
Wu, will reflect the interests of powerful nations and the conflicts
within and between them. While acknowledging the many attractions of the
earliest visions of the Internet, the authors describe the new order,
and speaking to both its surprising virtues and unavoidable vices. Far
from destroying the Internet, the experience of the last decade has lead
to a quiet rediscovery of some of the oldest functions and
justifications for territorial government. While territorial governments
have unavoidable problems, it has proven hard to replace what legitimacy
governments have, and harder yet to replace the system of rule of law
that controls the unchecked evils ofanarchy. While the Net will change
some of the ways that territorial states govern, it will not diminish
the oldest and most fundamental roles of government and challenges of
governance.
Well written and filled with fascinating examples, including colorful portraits of many key players in Internet history, this is a work that is bound to stir heated debate in the cyberspace community."
Price: $28.00 (Oxford University Press 2006)
The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America, from Slavery to the War on Terror by Christian Parenti
"On a typical day, you might make a call on a cell phone, withdraw money
at an ATM, visit the mall, and make a purchase with a credit card. Each
of these routine transactions leaves a digital trail, logging your
movements, schedules, habits and political beliefs for government
agencies and businesses to access. As cutting-edge historian and
journalist Christian Parenti points out in this urgent and timely book,
these everyday intrusions on privacy, while harmless in themselves, are
part of a relentless expansion of routine surveillance in American life
over the last two centuries. Vivid and chilling, The Soft Cage explores
the hidden history of surveillance--from controlling slaves in the old
South to implementing early criminal justice, tracking immigrants, and
even establishing modern social work. It also explores the role
computers play in creating a whole new world of seemingly benign
technologies--such as credit cards, website "cookies," electronic toll
collection, "data mining." and iris scanners at airports. With fears of
personal and national security at an all-time high, this ever-growing
infrastructure of high-tech voyeurism is shifting the balance of power
between individuals and the state in groundbreaking--and very
dangerous--ways. From closed-circuit television cameras to the
Department of Homeland Security, The Soft Cage offers a compelling,
vitally important history lesson for every American concerned about the
expansion of surveillance into our public and private lives."
Price: $11.20 (Basic Books 2004)
Surveillance in the Stacks: The FBI's Library Awareness Program by Herbert N. Foerstel
“Foerstel, himself one of the leaders in the effort to expose the FBI's
notorious `spies in the stacks' program, writes as a partisan of privacy
rights with a well-earned distrust of the FBI's efforts to excuse itself
from observing those rights. In fairness to the other side, however, he
also gives full play to the arguments for national security and for the
prevention of the flow of `sensitive' information into foreign hands. In
this extensively documented and thoroughly researched tale, he offers
many stories of the courage and fortitude of librarians opposed to this
program, from the jailing of Zoia Horn to the eloquent indignation of
Columbia University's Paula Kaufman and the tenacious probing of Jim
Schmidt and the American Library Association's Intellectual Freedom
Committee. Less happy is his picture of the heavily politicized National
Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) and others who
have acquiesced to the spying. The chapters on the political
ramifications of the program and the legal context of library
confidentiality are also valuable--although it is possible to argue with
some of Foerstal's conclusions. But this illuminating, cautionary work
is bound to remain an authoritative source on a vitally important
subject.”
--Library Journa
Price: $98.95 (Greenwood Press 1991)
Surveillance as Social Sorting: Privacy, Risk and Automated Discrimination by David Lyon
"This book examines some crucial aspects of surveillance processes with
a view to showing what constitutes them, why the growth of surveillance
is accelerating and what is really at stake personally and politically.
It scrutinizes individual surveillance systems - CCTV, biometrics,
intelligent transportation systems, smart cards, on-line profiling - and
discusses their implications for our future. Surveillance as Social
Sorting is a fascinating contribution to a relatively new field -
surveillance studies."
Price: $41.95 (Routledge 2003)
Credit Scores & Credit Reports by Evan Hendricks.
"Whether we like it or not, the credit score is emerging as the most
important "number" in the financial lives of American consumers. The
FICO score is often the major factor in determining how much consumers
pay for mortgages, refinancing, auto loans and credit cards, as well as
for auto or homeowners insurance.
Despite its importance, credit scoring began as a secret system, and has been shrouded in mystery ever since. In addition, there is little understanding of the credit reporting system, which holds financial histories on 210 million Americans and is the source of data for calculating credit scores. One problem: the credit reporting system has a long history of inaccuracy.
Through careful research and precise writing, Credit Scores & Credit Reports, allows consumers to understand how these systems actually work, and what they can do to improve their FICO scores. Importantly, the book also describes how the system sometimes doesn’t work, and how hundreds of thousands if not millions of consumers have been frustrated in their efforts to correct errors in their credit reports."
Price: $19.95 (Privacy Times 2005)
Spying with Maps: Surveillance Technologies and the Future of Privacy by Mark S. Monmonier
"Maps, as we know, help us find our way around. But they're also powerful
tools for someone hoping to find you. Widely available in electronic and
paper formats, maps offer revealing insights into our movements and
activities, even our likes and dislikes. In Spying with Maps, the
"mapmatician" Mark Monmonier looks at the increased use of geographic
data, satellite imagery, and location tracking across a wide range of
fields such as military intelligence, law enforcement, market research,
and traffic engineering. Could these diverse forms of geographic
monitoring, he asks, lead to grave consequences for society? To assess
this very real threat, he explains how geospatial technology works, what
it can reveal, who uses it, and to what effect.
Despite our apprehension about surveillance technology, Spying with Maps is not a jeremiad, crammed with dire warnings about eyes in the sky and invasive tracking. Monmonier's approach encompasses both skepticism and the acknowledgment that geospatial technology brings with it unprecedented benefits to governments, institutions, and individuals, especially in an era of asymmetric warfare and bioterrorism. Monmonier frames his explanations of what this new technology is and how it works with the question of whether locational privacy is a fundamental right. Does the right to be left alone include not letting Big Brother (or a legion of Little Brothers) know where we are or where we've been? What sacrifices must we make for homeland security and open government?"
Price: $25.00 (University of Chicago Press 2002)
An Army of Davids: How Markets and Technology Empower Ordinary People to Beat Big Media, Big Government, and Other Goliaths by Glenn Reynolds
At last count, there were an estimated 30.2 million blogs. Many of these
web sites begin and end with vacation photos or an excellent recipe for
chile rellenos. But a few blogs establish followings that are comparable
to small town newspapers or a popular talk show radio stations. These
followings evolve from simple lists of subscribers into communities and
even political movements.
Glenn Reynolds is one of the celebrity bloggers whose web site instapundit.com typically ranks up near the top of blog rankings, as measured by Technorati and others.
Reynolds's book, which is only partialy about the blog phenomenon, reveals many of the tricks of the political blogger -- well respected personal hobbies (brewing beer, producing CDs), quirky political views (put more guns on planes), commitment to futurism (ideas on terraforming Mars), and a general optimism about the ability of technology to level the playing field, eliminate the dinosaurs, and solve world problems.
There is much in the book to debate. But that is, after all, also the material of a good political blog.
---Marc Rotenberg
Price: $24.99 (Nelson Current 2006)
The Puzzle Palace: Inside the National Security Agency, America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization by James Bamford
"In this remarkable tour de force of investigative reporting, James
Bamford exposes the inner workings of America's largest, most secretive,
and arguably most intrusive intelligence agency. The NSA has long eluded
public scrutiny, but The Puzzle Palace penetrates its vast network of
power and unmasks the people who control it, often with shocking
disregard for the law. With detailed information on the NSA's secret
role in the Korean Airlines disaster, Iran-Contra, the first Gulf War,
and other major world events of the 80s and 90s, this is a brilliant
account of the use and abuse of technological espionage."
Price: $6.00 (Penguin Books 1983)
First Amendment Felon: The Story of Frank Wilkinson, His 132,000-Page FBI File, and His Epic Fight for Civil Rights and Liberties by Robert Sherrill
The story of Frank Wilkinson, who passed away just last month, is one
that needs to be told, in order to remind us that fear and political
opportunism are often the greatest threats to free speech. Robert
Sherrill's account of Wilkinson's various struggles with J. Edgar
Hoover's FBI and with the House Un-American Activities Committee
provides just such a pertinent reminder. When called before HUAC in
1958, Wilkinson refused to answer questions about his political
affiliations, citing not the Fifth Amendment, but the First. When he
lost his Supreme Court appeal in 1961, he was jailed for nine months for
contempt of Congress. Upon his release, he campaigned for the abolition
of HUAC, finally succeeding in 1975.
Sherrill's book provides wide-ranging and vivid context for its subject,
covering Wilkinson's college years through his 1975 vindication, but the
author's perspectives and allegiances are clear. This does not, however,
diminish the facts of Wilkinson's defiance. Make no mistake--this is a
political book, written with an eye on the parallels between the
climates of suspicion both then and now.
--Sherwin Siy
Price: $16.95 (Nation Books 2005)
Hide Your Assets & Disappear: A Step-By-Step Guide to Vanishing Without a Trace by Edmund J. Pankau
Privacy
and the Information Age is an English translation, new for 2002, of
Serge Gutwirth's 1998 "Privacyvrijheid." In this book, Gutwirth
illustrates his thesis that privacy involves much more than just the
protection of personal data; it is the fundamental safeguarding of
an individual's freedom to decide whether he/she would like that data
to be known or shared. Drawing on many international sources, Gutwirth
examines challenges to privacy posed by new technologies, ultimately
arguing that privacy is central to personal freedom, and that personal
freedom is central to democracy.
Price: $14.95 (Harper Collins 1999)
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen
It's been nearly a month since we learned that President Bush authorized
the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless surveillance after
9/11, but details about the program remain scarce. While government
officials refuse to discuss specifics, James Risen's "State of War"
sheds more light on this subject than any other source.
The new book reports previously unknown details about the Bush
Administration's foreign policy and intelligence operations, the
government's response to 9/11, and the events leading up to the war in
Iraq. It's a particularly interesting read, however, for those seeking
new information about the NSA's surveillance program, since Risen is one
of the reporters who recently revealed the operation's existence after
more than a year of investigation.
Among the items disclosed by unnamed officials interviewed for the book:
* The few Justice Department officials aware of the NSA operation call it simply "the Program."
* Administration officials decided not to seek court orders from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for the NSA operation partly because the number of telephone and Internet communications being monitored was so large that they couldn't obtain fast approval for all of them.
* 10-20 percent of the orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court are products of information gathered through the NSA program.
There are still many questions about the circumstances, details, and legality of the NSA's domestic surveillance, but "State of War" takes the first steps toward answering them.
-- Marcia Hofmann
Price: $26.00 (The Free Press 2006)
Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID
by Katherine Albrecht
The privacy movement has been waiting for the book that transforms the
world as did Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," Michael Harrington's "The
Other America," and Ralph Nader's "Unsafe at Any Speed." It's not yet
clear that Spychips will be that book, but the case can be made that
Spychips is one of the best privacy books in many years.
There are few technologies transforming the world as rapidly as RFID. The graph for deployment looks something like the right half of the letter "U." Two years ago hardly anyone mentioned RFID. Today Walmart and the Department of Defense require major suppliers to include the "talking ID tag" in all their products. Talk about liftoff.
So, there is a real issue and there are real policy questions. Sure, it is fine to chip your dog, but what about your daughter or your weird Aunt Sally? And if the chips aren't actually placed under the skin, as one Florida company is eager to do, what if the chip is embedded in your daughter's student ID card or Aunt Sally's prescription bottles? And what advice do we give to those visiting the United States who may soon be required to carry an RFID-enabled immigration document? Bring tin foil?
There is much here for Orwellian paranoia. But what makes Spychips such a compelling book is that Albrecht and McIntyre stay focused on what is actually happening today. They are also funny, clever, engaging, and informative. Much of the best material comes from the other side. If you really want to be creeped out, take a look at the patent applications for some of the RFID services on the horizon or attend the trade shows, listen to the speakers, and read the product announcements. Albrecht and McIntyre have done all this. Their reporting from behind enemy lines is first-rate
A good advocacy book also needs good recommendations. The authors cover these bases well, providing advice for local protests and national campaigns. Much credit also goes to their organization CASPIAN for several of the successful organizing efforts.
The privacy movement needs a book. I nominate Spychips.
- Marc Rotenberg
Price: $26.00 (Nelson Current 2005)
Computer Privacy Annoyances by Dan Tynan
Dan Tynan's Computer Privacy Annoyances gets it right: the book provides
excellent advice on how to protect privacy without turning the reader
into a paranoid. The book has one of the best "top ten" steps to
protect privacy I've read. He covers privacy at home, work, and on the
Internets. He also covers privacy in public, an increasingly important
topic in an age of ubiquitous cameras and nagging offline requests for
personal data at retail stores. A prescient section of the book
discusses the privacy risks associated with social network software,
systems that many even in the privacy community have adopted.
Oddly enough, O'Reilly (the publisher) stuck a registration card in Tynan's book. A careful reader of Tynan's book will learn that such product registration cards are just marketing tools and should be dispatched to the recycling bin.
-- Chris Jay Hoofnagle
Price: $11.00 (O'Reilly 2005)
Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution by Stephen Breyer
"It is a historic occasion when a Supreme Court justice offers, off the
bench, a new interpretation of the Constitution. Active Liberty, based
on the Tanner lectures on Human Values that Justice Stephen Breyer
delivered at Harvard University in November 2004, defines that term as a
sharing of the nation's sovereign authority with its citizens. Regarding
the Constitution as a guide for the application of basic American
principles to a living and changing society rather than as an arsenal of
rigid legal means for binding and restricting it, Justice Breyer argues
that the genius of the Constitution rests not in any static meaning it
might have had in a world that is dead and gone, but in the adaptability
of its great principles to cope with current problems.
Giving us examples of this interpretation in the areas of free speech,
federalism, privacy, affirmative action, statutory interpretation, and
administrative law, Justice Breyer states that courts should take
greater account of the Constitution's democratic nature when they
interpret constitutional and statutory texts. He also insists that the
people must develop political experience as well, and obtain the moral
education and stimulus that come from correcting their own errors. His
distinctive contribution to the federalism debate is his claim that
deference to congressional power can actually promote democratic
participation rather than thwart it. He argues convincingly that
although Congress is not perfect, it has done a better job than either
the executive or judicial branches at balancing the conflicting views of
citizens across the nation, especially during times of national crisis.
With a fine appreciation for complexity, Breyer reminds all Americans
that Congress, rather than the courts, is the place to resolve policy
disputes."
Price: $13.95 (Alfred A. Knopf 2005)
Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the War on Terrorism
by Geoffrey R Stone
"Geoffrey Stone's Perilous Times incisively investigates how the First
Amendment and other civil liberties have been compromised in America
during wartime. Stone delineates the consistent suppression of free
speech in six historical periods from the Sedition Act of 1798 to the
Vietnam War, and ends with a coda that examines the state of civil
liberties in the Bush era. Full of fresh legal and historical insight,
Perilous Times magisterially presents a dramatic cast of characters who
influenced the course of history over a two-hundred-year period: from
the presidents —- Adams, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Nixon —- to the
Supreme Court justices -— Taney, Holmes, Brandeis, Black, and Warren
-—to the resisters —- Clement Vallandingham, Emma Goldman, Fred
Korematsu, and David Dellinger. Filled with dozens of rare photographs,
posters, and historical illustrations, Perilous Times is resonant in its
call for a new approach in our response to grave crises."
Price: $12.98 (Norton & Co. 2004)
The Modern Identity Changer: How to Create and Use a New Identity for Privacy and Personal Freedom by Sheldon Charrett
"As governments worldwide have increased their stranglehold on the
personal information of ordinary citizens, advocates of new and
alternate identities have developed creative new methods and modes of
thinking to meet the challenge. Sheldon Charrett is a long-time fighter
for identity freedom, and now has taken the battle into the challenging
arena of the 21st century.
In this revised and updated edition of his best-selling book The Modern Identity Changer, you will learn how to acquire a new identity, produce the documents necessary to support it, and obtain residence, credit, employment and banking privileges to enjoy it. Read all-new and expanded information on:
-- evaluating the pros and cons of segmented ID change vs. total ID
change
-- creating alternate identity documents from scratch
-- working around the onerous new rules for mail drops and private
mailboxes
-- establishing real estate residence without ever signing a document
-- making your own notary embossing plate
-- interpreting, applying for, and using Social Security numbers
Besides getting Charrett’s latest solutions to Big Brother’s alarming assaults on privacy, you will also benefit from reader feedback on the first edition, with verified tips and tricks from the trenches in the ongoing struggle to maintain our cherished freedoms."
Price: $25.00 (Paladin Press, 2004)
The War on the Bill of Rights-And the Gathering Resistance by Nat Hentoff
"The Constitution, said Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia ominously
in March, 2003, just sets minimums. Most of the rights that you enjoy go
way beyond what the Constitution requires. In The War on the Bill of
Rights-and the Gathering Resistance, nationally syndicated columnist and
Village Voice mainstay Nat Hentoff draws on untapped sources-from
reporters, resisters, and civil liberties law professors across the
country to administration insiders-to piece together the true dimensions
of the current assault on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The
first draft of the USA PATRIOT Act to go to Congress included the
suspension of habeas corpus. The proposed sequel PATRIOT Act II) would
make it possible to revoke U.S. citizenship, and, for the first time in
history, authorize secret arrests. Both Patriot Acts increase electronic
surveillance of Americans, with minimal judicial supervision. Hentoff
refocuses attention on domestic surveillance initiatives established by
unilateral executive actions, such as Operation TIPS and the Total
Information Awareness System, both still quietly functioning. Hentoff
chronicles the inevitable rise of citizen's groups against these gross
infringements, comparing today's Bill of Rights Defense Committees to
Samuel Adams's Sons of Liberty, whose campaign against the British
helped to precipitate the American Revolution. Afforded little coverage
in the major media, the Bill of Rights Defense Committees now have
spread to nearly one hundred cities and towns nationwide. Hentoff quotes
Lance Morrow, who wrote, If Americans win a war (not just against Saddam
Hussein but the longer-term struggle) and lose the Constitution, they
will have losteverything."
Price: $5.96 (Seven Stories Press, 2003)
The Traveler: The First Novel of the Fourth Realm Trilogy by John Twelve Hawks
"The facts you know are mostly an illusion. The real struggle of history
is going on beneath the surface." While this quote could easily come
from one of the "Matrix" films, it is in fact from The Traveler by John
Twelve Hawks, a new science fiction book about the struggle between good
and evil in a surveillance society.
In Twelve Hawks' world, the good guys are the Travelers, select humans born to enlighten mankind and resist the dominance of the evil Tabula. The Tabula are a dark and powerful group that operates outside the strictures of government, working behind the scenes to establish a panoptic world of perfect control. The Tabula employ high-tech, privacy-invasive tools such as video surveillance, RFIDs, biometrics, and Carnivore to track and eliminate threats to their master plan. They also manipulate the "Vast Machine," a matrix of media, government, and corporate messages that fills people's minds with selective information and distracts them from the reality that their lives are externally constructed and controlled, preventing them from questioning the status quo. Travelers -- who include Buddha, Jesus Christ, and Joan of Arc among their fallen ranks -- inspire people to break free of the illusions generated by the Vast Machine. Instead of killing the Travelers, as the Tabula have done in the past, they now want to harness the Travelers' powers as part of the larger plan to build the perfect panopticon.
The Traveler manages to weave technology, philosophy, history, mysticism and pop culture into an epic story, making for an entertaining and thoughtful read. While not a literary novel in the style of Orwell or Kafka, The Traveler is a story that has the potential to raise questions about the state of privacy among popular audiences. The book is currently on the New York Times Bestseller list and is set to become a movie early next year.
-- Louisa Garib
Price: $12.95 (Doubleday Books 2005)
Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity by Lawrence Lessig
"A landmark manifesto about the genuine closing of the American mind.
Lawrence Lessig could be called a cultural environmentalist. One of America's most original and influential public intellectuals, his focus is the social dimension of creativity: how creative work builds on the past and how society encourages or inhibits that building with laws and technologies. In his two previous books, Code and The Future of Ideas, Lessig concentrated on the destruction of much of the original promise of the Internet. Now, in Free Culture, he widens his focus to consider the diminishment of the larger public domain of ideas. In this powerful wake-up call he shows how short-sighted interests blind to the long-term damage they're inflicting are poisoning the ecosystem that fosters innovation.
All creative works-books, movies, records, software, and so on-are a compromise between what can be imagined and what is possible-technologically and legally. For more than two hundred years, laws in America have sought a balance between rewarding creativity and allowing the borrowing from which new creativity springs. The original term of copyright set by the Constitution in 1787 was seventeen years. Now it is closer to two hundred. Thomas Jefferson considered protecting the public against overly long monopolies on creative works an essential government role. What did he know that we've forgotten?
Lawrence Lessig shows us that while new technologies always lead to new laws, never before have the big cultural monopolists used the fear created by new technologies, specifically the Internet, to shrink the public domain of ideas, even as the same corporations use the same technologies to control more and more what we can and can't do with culture. As more and more culture becomes digitized, more and more becomes controllable, even as laws are being toughened at the behest of the big media groups. What's at stake is our freedom-freedom to create, freedom to build, and ultimately, freedom to imagine."
Price: $12.95 (Penguin Press HC 2004)
Google Hacking for Penetration Testers by Johnny Long
Johnny Long's "Google Hacking for the Penetration Testers" is an
excellent resource on the Google Internet search engine. Anyone who
uses Google should read the first two chapters of this book, as it
explains the basic and more advanced search techniques available. After
chapter two, things get interesting. Long explains how to use Google to
access information anonymously, and then dives into discovering site
vulnerabilities and personal information on the Internet. It concludes
with common-sense approaches to securing your own servers against the
search techniques explained earlier in the book.
--Chris Jay Hoofnagle
Price: $44.95 (Syngress 2005)
Angel Customers & Demon Customers: Discover Which Is Which, and Turbo-Charge Your Stock
by Larry Selden & Geoffrey Colvin
A major clothing seller once declared that, "an educated consumer is our
best customer." If retailers listen to Larry Selden and Geoffrey
Colvin's advice in "Angel Customers and Demon Customers, " the sucker
consumer will be the new "best" customer. Selden and Colvin argue that
businesses should divide their customer bases into "angel" and "demon"
consumers. Angels are not careful with their money; they charge $5,000
plane tickets and keep high credit card balances. Demons are those who
pay their credit card bills in full, buy products that are discounted,
return items, or those who spend sales associates' time asking questions
about products. In other words, the authors imply that frugal, smart
shoppers who do their homework are demonic. Angels should be rewarded,
while demons' behavior should be shaped so that it becomes more
profitable for the business. In extreme cases, demon customers should be "fired." Already, Selden and Colvin's ideas have taken root at major
companies, including Best Buy and Fidelity Bank.
As with other books of this genre, "Angel Customers and Demon Customers"
could be less repetitive and emotional, but more importantly, it could
be more insightful. The authors devote only a single paragraph to the
privacy implications of their proposal. There is no serious discussion
of the ethical dimension of price and service discrimination. In light
of the Annenberg Policy Report released this week, where respondents
objected strongly to both business practices, this book could be
improved by a thoughtful treatment of the bounds of "good' and "evil"
and the implications of categorizing people as such.
While some of the authors' proposals have merit, overall these practices
are dangerous. On one level, the practices would seem to reduce
competition, as focus would be shifted away from developing the best
product at the lowest price to one where the focus is identifying the
loyal and shaping the thrifty into spendthrifts. Also, these practices
will favor the rich and unfairly penalize the poor and minorities
(according to the Wall Street Journal, Best Buy identified their most
desirable customers as "upper-income men, suburban mothers,
small-business owners, young family men, and technology enthusiasts").
With time, these practices could negatively alter the balance of power
between the consumer individual and businesses, encouraging one to ask: "Should I return that item, or will it mark me as a demon?"
--Chris Jay Hoofnagle
Price: $11.98 ( Portfolio 2003)
Welcome to the Machine: Science, Surveillance, and the Culture of Control (Politics of the Living) by Derrick Jensen
"In their new collaboration for the "Politics of the Living" series, Derrick Jensen and George Draffan reveal the modern culture of the machine, where corporate might makes technology right, government money feeds the greed for mad science, and absolute surveillance leads to absolute control--and corruption. Through meticulous research and fiercely personal narrative, Jensen and Draffan move beyond journalism and exposé to question our civilization’s very mode of existence. Welcome to the Machine defies our willingness to submit to the institutions and technologies built to rob us of all that makes us human--our connection to the land, our kinship with one another, our place in the living world."
Price: $18.00 (Chelsea Green Publishing Co. 2004)
Preventing Identity Theft in Your Business: How to Protect Your Business, Customers, and Employees by Judith M. Collins
"[R]ecent studies indicate that at least 50 percent or more of identity
thefts are committed inside the workplace by a dishonest few employees
who steal the Social Security, credit card, banking, or other numbers
from their coworkers and customers," argues Judith Collins, a professor
at the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University. Working
from this premise, Collins suggests a four-factor model to address
identity theft risks in the workplace: companies should secure personal
information by focusing on personnel, processes, proprietary
information, and transactions. Collins's book is chock full of helpful
exercises and compliance systems for businesses to reduce the risk of
misuse of personal information. While the book is a great starting point
for businesses concerned about employee deviance, it does not address
the larger problems driving identity theft, such as instant credit
granting and poor authentication practices in the retail industry.
Nevertheless, Collins's book provides useful guidance in securing
personal information; guidance that is highly valuable in light of new
requirements that businesses disclose security breaches.
-- Chris Jay Hoofnagle
Price: $26.95 (John Wiley & Sons 2005)
From Victim to Victor: A Step-by-Step Guide for Ending the Nightmare of Identity Theft by Mari J. Frank
"With 10 million new victims a year, there is a vast need for people to
have legal help at a reasonable price. As a lawyer and former victim
herself, who has helped thousands of victims, Ms. Frank coaches and
guides you through every step, to lead you out of the nightmare. Mari
Frank had created the first self-help recovery tool for victims of
identity theft back in 1998, and this new edition with CD includes the
new federal laws and regulations in an easy to understand format."
Price: $35.95 (Porpoise Press 2005)
Privacy Protection and Computer Forensics (Artech House Computer Security Series)
by Michael A. Caloyannides
"Going far beyond typical computer forensics books, this thoroughly
revised edition of an Artech House bestseller is the only book on the
market that focuses on how to protect one's privacy from data theft,
hostile computer forensics, and legal action. It addresses the concerns
of today's IT professionals, as well as many users of personal
computers, offering more detailed "how to" guidance on protecting the
confidentiality of data stored on computers. Moreover, the second
edition has been updated to include specific information on the
vulnerabilities of ancillary computing devices, such as PDAs, cellular
telephones and smart cards. This cutting-edge book identifies the
specific areas where sensitive and potentially incriminating data is
hiding in computers and consumer electronics, and explains how to go
about removing this data. The book provides a systematic process for
installing operating systems and application software that will help to
minimize the possibility of security compromises, and numerous specific
steps that need to be taken to prevent the hostile exploitation of one's
computer."
Price: $79.95 (Artech House Publishers 2004)
How to Be Invisible: The Essential Guide to Protecting Your Personal Privacy, Your Assets, and Your Life by J.J. Luna
"From cyberspace to crawl spaces, new innovations in information
gathering have left the private life of the average person open to
scrutiny, and worse, exploitation. In this thoroughly revised update of
his immensely popular guide How to Be Invisible, J.J. Luna shows you how
to protect yourself from these information predators by securing your
vehicle and real estate ownership, your bank accounts, your business
dealings, your computer files, your home address, and more.
"J.J. Luna, a highly trained and experienced security consultant, shows
you how to achieve the privacy you crave and deserve, whether you just
want to shield yourself from casual scrutiny or take your life savings
with you and disappearing without a trace. Whatever your needs, Luna
reveals the shocking secrets that private detectives and other seekers
of personal information use to uncover information and then shows how to
make a serious commitment to safeguarding yourself.
"There is a prevailing sense in our society that true privacy is a thing
of the past. Filled with vivid real life stories drawn from the
headlines and from Luna's own consulting experience, How to Be
Invisible, Revised Edition is a critical antidote to the privacy
concerns that continue only to grow in magnitude as new and more
efficient ways of undermining our personal security are made available.
Privacy is a commonly-lamented casualty of the Information Age and of
the world's changing climate-but that doesn't mean you have to stand for
it."
Price: $23.95 (Thomas Dunne Books 2004)
The Privacy Handbook by Michael Chesbro
"'Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase safety,'
stated Benjamin Franklin in 1759, 'deserve neither liberty nor
safety.' Unfortunately, in today's climate of fear, the government,
the media and plenty of other American citizens see things
differently. If you are not willing to accept "some restrictions in
civil liberties to guarantee security," (as Tom Brokaw and others have
phrased it), this book is essential reading. In it, Michael Chesbro
shares hundreds of simple but effective measures you can take - short
of armed revolution - to preserve your privacy and sovereignty in the
face of Big Brother run amok. By being aware of the various threats to
financial privacy, computer and online security, private
communications, home security and more, and by employing these
techniques to combat them, you can protect yourself from rogue
government agents and meddling bureaucracies as well as nosy
neighbors, prying family members, identity thieves, stalkers,
solicitors and other enemies of privacy and personal liberty."
List: $25.00 (Paladin Press 2002)
FIRE’s Guide to Free Speech on Campus by David French, Greg Lukianoff, and Harvey Silverglate
"Written by FIRE President David A. French, FIRE Director of Legal and
Public Advocacy Greg Lukianoff, FIRE Co-founder and Director Harvey A.
Silverglade, the Guide explores the philosophy and history behind our
modern understanding of free speech, discusses the development of law
regarding free speech and the First Amendment, and elaborates on the
moral and practical values that form the foundations of liberty.
Perhaps most importantly, the Guide equips students with the
rhetorical and legal tools to stand up for their rights. The Guide
relies on examples from many of FIRE's successful defenses of liberty
to let students know that they can fight and win battles with
university administrators."
"FIRE's Guide to Free Speech on Campus is the fourth in FIRE’s series
of Guides to Student Rights on Campus, which also includes FIRE’s
Guide to Due Process and Fair Procedure on Campus, Guide to Student
Fees, Funding and Legal Equality on Campus, and Guide to Religious
Liberty on Campus. A fifth volume, FIRE's Guide to First-Year
Orientation and Thought Reform on Campus, will be released next year.
Paperback copies of all of the Guides are available to college
students free of charge and to the general public at a nominal costs
through thefireguides.org. Electronic editions are also available for
free download in PDF format at thefireguides.org."
(Foundation for Individual Rights in Education 2005)
Prying Eyes: Protect Your Privacy from People Who Sell to You, Snoop on You, or Steal from You
by Eric Gertler
"You leave an electronic trail every time you use a credit card, rent
a DVD, mail in a rebate form, go to the doctor, open a bank account,
or surf the Internet at home and at work.
"News stories about identity theft, anti-terrorist legislation,
cyber-stalking, marketing databases, and employer surveillance
practices are evidence that your privacy is violated more and more
every day. Using examples from real-life situations, Prying Eyes
reveals how, often without your knowledge, people use your personal
information to sell to you, snoop on you, and steal from you.
"Eric Gertler reveals how to minimize your exposure in every facet of lifeat home, at the office, on vacation, at the store, at the doctor's office, online, and on your cell phone. Beyond reporting and speculation, Prying Eyes will empower you to take charge of your personal information before someone else does.
"You will learn:
* How information about your bank account, credit, and purchases is tracked, stored, and accessed -- and how to limit your exposure.
* How to protect yourself from identity theftand how to recover if you've been a victim.
* Risks to your privacy at work -- why it is important to separate your personal life from your business life.
* Threats to your medical files -- who has access to them how they're commonly mishandled, and how to prevent information from getting into the wrong hands."
List: $7.25 (Random House Reference 2004)
No Place to Hide by Robert O'harrow
Journalist Robert O'Harrow's first book, No Place to Hide, is a
Washington insider's exposé of how the fast-developing data
collection, analysis, and identification technologies first developed
for the marketing industry are increasingly used for law enforcement
purposes since 9/11. O'Harrow's book recounts the development of the
USA PATRIOT Act in astonishing detail, complete with vignettes about
the Act's authors sleeping in their offices while drafting the
legislation, and the refusal of government attorneys to engage civil
liberties advocates to discuss the legislation, even off the record.
O'Harrow obtained unprecedented access for this book, and as a result,
No Place to Hide is an illuminating read for those interested in civil
liberties issues. He shows that John Poindexter is still involved in
Total-Information-Awareness-like activities. His interviews with key
people at Acxiom reveal the company has tricky methods of collecting data
that people think are private, such as unlisted phone numbers. But
what is perhaps most interesting is how O'Harrow shows the people
involved in creating new government powers and data collection tools
are concerned about how their actions affect privacy.
- Chris Hoofnagle
List: $26.00 (Free Press 2005)
Compilation of State and Federal Privacy Laws by Robert Ellis Smith
The Compilation
of State and Federal Privacy Laws is an indispensable reference
book describing and citing more than 600 laws affecting confidentiality,
grouped by state in several categories, including credit, medical,
financial, electronic surveillance, telephones, Social Security numbers,
and much more. Canada's federal and provincial laws are also described.
The full texts of major U.S. laws - including laws on telephone solicitation, electronic surveillance, and credit bureaus - are reprinted in full in the appendix.
"Recommended for all public libraries," says Library Journal
List: $31.00 (Privacy Journal 2000)
The End of Privacy by Charles J. Sykes
As
Justice Louis Brandeis suggested more than a century ago, privacy --
the right to be left alone -- is the most valued, if not the most celebrated
right enjoyed by Americans. But in the face of computer, video, and
audio technology, aggressive and sophisticated marketing databases,
state and federal "wars" against crime and terrorism, new
laws governing personal behavior, and an increasingly-intrusive media,
all of us find our personal space and freedom under attack.
In The End of Privacy, Charles Sykes traces the roots of privacy in our nation's founding and Constitution, and reveals its inexorable erosion in our time. From our homes and offices to the Presidency, Sykes defines what we have lost, citing example after example of citizens who have had their conversations monitored, movements surveilled, medical and financial records accessed, sexual preferences revealed, homes invaded, possessions confiscated, and even lives threatened - all in the name of some alleged higher social or governmental good. Sykes concludes by suggesting steps by which we might begin to recover the territory we've lost: our fundamental right to our own lives.
List: $13.95 (St Martins Press 2000)
The Code Book : The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography by Simon Singh
For millennia, secret writing was the domain
of spies, diplomats, and generals; with the advent of the Internet,
it has become the concern of the public and businesses. One cyber-libertarian
responded with the freeware encryption program Pretty Good Privacy
(PGP), and Singh similarly meets a sharpening public curiosity about
how codes work. Beginning with such simple ideas as monoalphabetic
substitution, which can protect the communications of a boy's treehouse
club but not much more, Singh underscores with stories how codemakers
and codebreakers have battled each other throughout history. A tool
called frequency analysis easily defeats the monoalphabetic cipher,
and encryptors over time have added the Vigenere square, cipher disks,
one-time pads, and public-key cryptography that underlies PGP. But
each security strategy, Singh explains, contains some vulnerability
that the clever code cracker can exploit, an opaque process the author
splendidly illuminates. Instances of successful decipherment, as of
Egyptian hieroglyphics or the German Enigma cipher system in World
War II, combine with Singh's sketches of the mathematicians who have
advanced the art of secrecy, from Julius Caesar to Alan Turing to contemporary
mathematicians, resulting in a wonderfully understandable survey. -- Booklist
List: $14.00 (Anchor 2000)
The Limits of Privacy by Amitai Etzioni
Communitarianism holds that a good society must
maintain a balance between individual rights and the common good. Since
the 1960s or so, concern for the common good has given way in the US
to "excessive deference to privacy." Etzioni believes its
time to correct the balance. Certainly aware of the importance of privacy,
Etzioni lays out specific criteria to be met and stringent processes
to be followed when rights are to be curtailed. There must be a real,
not hypothetical, danger to the common good. The danger must first
be dealt with, without restricting privacy rights if possible. When
rights are curtailed the action should be minimally intrusive, and
undesired side effects must be guarded against, e.g., if widespread
HIV testing is found necessary, efforts must be made to enhance the
confidentiality of medical records. Taking this framework, Etzioni
examines five areas of public policy, among them mandatory HIV testing
of infants, the public listing of sex offenders ("Megan's Laws"),
and medical- records privacy. Predictably, in all but the last, where
he argues that there should be more protection, he finds a minimal
diminution in individual rights justifiable. Sex offenders, for instance,
do have their rights curtailed when their presence in a community is
made public, but the benefit to the community is worth it. These substantive
chapters are intriguing, yet overall there is not much new here. Etzioni
has plowed this field often, and the basic premises of his argument
are not improved upon. Curiously, he continues to paint privacy with
broad strokes, with too little regard for the nuances of that term.
Is it hedonism he decries, or selfishness? Are demands for rights all
symptomatic of a disregard for the public good? Such issues remain
unexplored. -- Kirkus Associates
List $16.00 (Basic Books 2000)
End of Privacy: How Total Surveillance Is Becoming a Reality by Reg Whitaker
Thanks to dramatic technological advances, surveillance
monitoring can now provide nearly global coverage, exposing the everyday
lives of ordinary people--in the workplace, at school, on the Internet,
everywhere -- to serve public, private, and prurient interests. Today,
Whitaker notes, private-information brokers amass databases for an
innumerable variety of commercial purposes -- from credit reporting
to mass marketing. Vast amounts of detailed personal information, including
seemingly useless minutiae, end up in corporate hands. Orwell's monolithic
Big Brother has fragmented into a myriad of Little Brothers, which
add up to a powerful system with little or no accountability. Who,
Whitaker asks, watches the watchers? -- Amazon Review
List $14.95 (New Press 2000)
Private Matters: In Defense of the Personal Life by
Janna Malamud Smith
This enjoyable book makes the case, in so many areas of life, of the importance and value of privacy to a well lived life. Lots of real life examples. Few books address such themes so well.
List $22.00 (Perseus Press 1997)
The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses by
Alan Charles Kors, Harvey A. Silverglate
Alan Charles Kors ... and Harvey A. Silvergate ... deliver the unexpected. Refreshingly, they seem to believe that even if professors teach what they wish, Western civilization will survive.... The abuses they describe need fixing, and this cogent book should help -- The New York Times Book Review
List $15.00 (Harper Perennial 1999)
Secrecy: The American Experience by Daniel Patrick
Moynihan
A Senator and historian looks at the history of secrecy in America and weighs its costs for democratic government, national security, and agency accountability. His conclusion: more secrecy not less is the key to protecting the nation.
List: $10.95 (Yale University Press 1999)
May It Please the Court: The First Amendment edited
by Peter Irons
This sequel to the bestselling May It Please The Court focuses on sixteen key First Amendment cases illustrating the most controversial debates over issues of free speech, freedom of the press, and the right to assemble. Includes actual oral arguments made before the Supreme Court by well-known attorneys, along with transcripts placing speakers and cases in context.
List $14.95 (New Press 1998)
Persuasion and Privacy in Cyberspace by Laura J. Gurak
What happens when the Internet is used as a forum
for public debate? Do the speed and power of computer-mediated communication
foster democratic discourse and protest? This fascinating book examines
two examples of social action on the Internet - the organized protests
against Lotus MarketPlace and the Clipper chip - in order to evaluate
the impact of the net on our social and political life.
List: $25.00 (Yale University Press 1997)
Technology and Privacy: The New Landscape edited by Philip E. Agre and Marc Rotenberg. With contributions by Philip E. Agre, Victoria Bellotti, Colin J. Bennett, Herbert Burkert, Simon G. Davies, David H. Flaherty, Robert Gellman, Viktor Mayer-Schonberger, David J. Phillips, and Rohan Samarajiva
The erosion of privacy is of concern to all Americans.
This book provides a valuable framework for readers of many disciplines
and will clarify the issues we need to address. -- Caroline Kennedy,
co-author of The Right to Privacy
List: $17.95 (MIT Press 1998)
The Electronic Privacy Papers by Bruce Schneier (Editor),
David Banisar (Editor). Forward by Hon. John Anderson
The definitive collection of materials on the issues, players, and history of the battle for electronic privacy in the information age. Contain more than 700 pages of previously classified government documents, Congressional testimony, reports, and news items.
List: $59.99 (John Wiley & Sons 1997)
Web Security & Commerce by Simson Garfinkel and
Gene Spafford
A comprehensive, well written introduction to developing and maintaining safe web sites. Also provides excellent techical information on timely policy issues, such as privacy, cryptography, censorship technology and intellectual property.
List: $34.95 (O'Reilly and Associates 1997)
Protect Your Privacy on the Internet by Bryan Pfaffenberger
A critical privacy survival guide for anyone who clicks on a web page, sends e-mail, posts to newsgroups, or just wonders how it is that so much personal information is available online. Software tools included.
List: $29.99 (Wiley Computer 1997)
Digital Cash by Peter Wayner
The second edition of the highly acclaimed Digital Cash is an
updated and comprehensive guide to exchanging money over the Net. The
coverage includes algorithms for producing and implementing monetary
systems like digital checks, digital coupons, digital cashier's checks,
divisible cash and anonymous digital cash, as well as a survey of the
different commercial digital cash systems available. The enclosed DOS
disk contains CGI scripts and demos of digital cash software.
List: $27.95 (Academic Press 1997)
The Right to Privacy by Ellen Alderman & Caroline
Kennedy
Engaging, personal, and educational. These two law school friends (one of whom happens to be the daughter of a former President) describe how the law and the legal system wrestle with the right to privacy. (Detailed review by EPIC)
List: $14.00 (Vintage 1997)
Shamans, Software, and Spleens : Law and the Construction of
the Information Society by James Boyle
Complex but compelling. This law school professor goes past the cliches and hype of the Internet world and asks Big Questions about where this is all heading. Some of his answers may surprise you.
List: $17.00 (Harvard University Press 1997)
Who Knows: Safeguarding Your Privacy in a Networked World by
Ann Cavoukian & Don Tapscott
Think you're being watched? You may be right. A privacy commissioner and a futurist team up to explore current and future threats to personal privacy.
List: $24.95 (McGraw-Hill 1997)
Idoru by William Gibson
The author of Neuromancer and Virtual Light takes us to 21st century
Tokyo where "both the promises of technology and the disasters
of cyber-industrialism stand in stark contrast, where the haves and
the have-nots find themselves walled apart, and where information and
fame are the most valuable and dangerous currencies."
List: $6.99 (Berkeley Publishing Group 1997)
Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet by
Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon
A well researched history of the Internet, filled with stories of early network pioneers, amazing breakthroughs, and the twists and turns that brought millions to cyberspace.
List: $14.00 (Touchstone 1998)
Computer Related Risks by Peter G. Neumann
From the moderator of this RISKS Digest comes this compendium of the glitches, bugs, breakdowns, and other less than desired outcomes that keeps the computing world on its toes. Or at least should.
List: $24.75 (ACM Press 1995)
Applied Cryptography by Bruce Schneier
From Caesar's cypher to quantum cryptography, no book covers the development of crypto as well as this information-packed reference work. The book the NSA never wanted published.
List: $54.95 (John Wiley & Sons 1996)
Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson
A cyberpunk classic. In the near future, the online world reigns while the US has broken into franchises run by the mafia, cults and other loony groups. A hacker has to stop the ultimate killer virus.
List: $12.95 (Bantam Books 2000)
1984 by George Orwell
Before the Borg was the Party, Big Brother, and the Junior Anti-Sex League.
Pretty grim. ($5.95 - New American Library 1989)
The Tin Drum by Gunter Grass
A classic work, universally acclaimed as the greatest German novel written
since the end of World War II. The film version received an Oscar in 1978.
($15.00 - Vintage 1990)
The Computer Privacy Handbook: A Practical Guide to E-Mail Encryption,
Data Protection, and PGP Privacy Software by Andre Bacard
The nuts 'n' bolts of on-line privacy. ($22.46 - Peachpit Press 1995)
The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency by
James Bamford
Ever wonder why they call the NSA "No Such Agency?" This 1983 classic
lifts the veil on the folks who brought you Clipper and much more. ($15.95
- Penguin Books 1983)
Censored: the news that didn't make the news by Carl
Jensen
Sometimes it's the press and not government that keeps important stories under
wraps. ($14.95 - Seven Stories Press 1996)
The Naked Consumer: How Our Private Lives Become Public Commodities by
Erik Larsen
Thirty years after Vance Packard's classic "The Naked Society" comes
this timely reminder about new threats to personal privacy. ($10.95 - Penguin
Books 1992)
Make No Law: The Sullivan Case and the First Amendment by
Anthony Lewis
Few cases have done more to shape the First Amendment than this historic decision.
($14.00 - Vintage Books 1992)
Our Vanishing Privacy: And What You Can Do to Protect Yours by
Robert Ellis Smith
Daily threats to privacy, and what you should do. ($12.95 - Breakout Production
1993)
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