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Means of Control: How the Hidden Alliance of Tech and Government Is Creating a New American Surveillance State
A sweeping exposé of the U.S. government’s alliance with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers, and how their efforts are reshaping surveillance and privacy as we know it
Our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this—ever get the sense that an ad is “following” you around the internet?—but we don’t understand the extent to which the technology embedded in our phones, computers, cars, and homes is part of a vast ecosystem of data collection. Our public spaces are blanketed by cameras put up in the name of security. And pretty much everything that emits a wireless signal of any kind—routers, televisions, Bluetooth devices, chip-enabled credit cards, even the tires of every car manufactured since the mid-2000s—can be and often is covertly monitored. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of data about every citizen—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government.
Reporter Byron Tau has been digging deep inside the growing alliance between business, tech, and government for years, piecing together a secret how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world have become a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring. Tau traces the unlikely tale of how the government came to view commercial data as a principal asset of national security in the years after 9/11, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, to build a foreign and domestic surveillance capacity of such breathtaking scope that it could peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. The result is a cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats with one directive—“get everything you can”—and, as Tau observes, a darkly humorous world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries, and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries.
Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is our era’s defining story of the dangerous grand bargain we’ve ubiquitous, often cheap technology, but at what price to our privacy?
Our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this—ever get the sense that an ad is “following” you around the internet?—but we don’t understand the extent to which the technology embedded in our phones, computers, cars, and homes is part of a vast ecosystem of data collection. Our public spaces are blanketed by cameras put up in the name of security. And pretty much everything that emits a wireless signal of any kind—routers, televisions, Bluetooth devices, chip-enabled credit cards, even the tires of every car manufactured since the mid-2000s—can be and often is covertly monitored. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of data about every citizen—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government.
Reporter Byron Tau has been digging deep inside the growing alliance between business, tech, and government for years, piecing together a secret how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world have become a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring. Tau traces the unlikely tale of how the government came to view commercial data as a principal asset of national security in the years after 9/11, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, to build a foreign and domestic surveillance capacity of such breathtaking scope that it could peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. The result is a cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats with one directive—“get everything you can”—and, as Tau observes, a darkly humorous world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries, and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries.
Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is our era’s defining story of the dangerous grand bargain we’ve ubiquitous, often cheap technology, but at what price to our privacy?
400 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
April 6, 2024
I came into this book as a layperson with no background in the subject matter, and it was dense, labyrinthine, and at times confusing with the many many acronyms, actors, agencies, and matryoshka shell companies. This is no fault of the author, though, because it is meant to be utterly opaque and obfuscating.
At times, I found the prose dry compared to other non-fiction I've read about similarly dense topics, and the overlapping timelines of the chapters by subject made some of the technologies/actors difficult to place in context with one another.
So, while this was a four-star read for me, I acknowledge that I may not be the target audience, and there is no doubt that it was thorough, well reported, and honest about what questions still remain. I found his suggestions for how to anyone can take better charge of their security a helpful endnote to what is otherwise our collective Orwellian nightmare born of convenience.
--I received a free ARC from a Goodreads giveaway, but my opinions are my own--
At times, I found the prose dry compared to other non-fiction I've read about similarly dense topics, and the overlapping timelines of the chapters by subject made some of the technologies/actors difficult to place in context with one another.
So, while this was a four-star read for me, I acknowledge that I may not be the target audience, and there is no doubt that it was thorough, well reported, and honest about what questions still remain. I found his suggestions for how to anyone can take better charge of their security a helpful endnote to what is otherwise our collective Orwellian nightmare born of convenience.
--I received a free ARC from a Goodreads giveaway, but my opinions are my own--
April 16, 2024
Byron Tau provides the reader with a solid understanding of the politics and history of AI, even if he doesn't delve as deep as I would have liked. This book could have been twice as long and still felt like an overview.
It's intended for a general audience looking to get an introduction to the subject and ideas for further research on the reader's part. It also offers a handy guide to how to protect yourself from AI, even if it doesn't detail how exactly AI works.
I appreciate that the book raises serious concerns without being overly alarmist. It might make you look askance at your devices, but it arms you with steps you can take to mitigate privacy concerns, so you won't panic.
Tau seems to have done extensive research, but the version of this book that I read (I won it in a giveaway, so it might not be the final draft) didn't make me feel like I would be able to explain how AI works, even if I have a somewhat better understanding of the political and economic issues with it. It seems geared toward people for whom an overview is enough. It achieves that goal pretty well.
Tau's writing is occasionally dry, but still journalistic in style and accessible to a general audience. Anyone looking for an introduction to the subject should definitely consider reading this book.
It's intended for a general audience looking to get an introduction to the subject and ideas for further research on the reader's part. It also offers a handy guide to how to protect yourself from AI, even if it doesn't detail how exactly AI works.
I appreciate that the book raises serious concerns without being overly alarmist. It might make you look askance at your devices, but it arms you with steps you can take to mitigate privacy concerns, so you won't panic.
Tau seems to have done extensive research, but the version of this book that I read (I won it in a giveaway, so it might not be the final draft) didn't make me feel like I would be able to explain how AI works, even if I have a somewhat better understanding of the political and economic issues with it. It seems geared toward people for whom an overview is enough. It achieves that goal pretty well.
Tau's writing is occasionally dry, but still journalistic in style and accessible to a general audience. Anyone looking for an introduction to the subject should definitely consider reading this book.
April 7, 2024
3.5 Despite my vaccination with this field I found the book to be overly dry and a bit of a slog. Perhaps another example of my having read so many other books on this topic that there was little New here and the style was not as engaging as books from the source - ie. Snowden, Wylie, or even Zuboff. Spent too much time in first 1/4 on foreign surveillance, and while I get that the author was setting this up to connect to the methods eventually being implemented in the US, it all began to feel like an acronym stew and overly broad.
Purely taste as I'm certain there are those who will love this book because it's so dry and there's no doubt, it's an excellent resource book - just not an engaging read for me.
Additionally, I found the... bias/views a bit off putting at times. Writing about the US military in Middle East:
"...the countries military would invade, occupy, and reconstruct Afghanistan and later Iraq."
Then covering prisoner interrogation:
"After fifty-one interrogation sessions, a lower level Iraqi prisoner swept up in one of JSOC's raids had provided..."
I personally have issues concerning sanitized generalizations like 'reconstruct', 'swept up' & 'provided', but that's just me.
"The United States is routinely accused of killing civilians while conducting military operations against terrorist groups like ISIS, for example, and indeed sometimes the United States does kill civilians inadvertently as the by-product of strikes against legitimate targets. But in other instances, it's false propaganda..."
Oof, that sure sounds like a gentle way of saying, mistakes were made.
Basically, often the clinical and dry nature of the writing was not engaging and suffered in making any of the facts... human. Plus, there was also zero mention of the cost of any of the surveillance.
So, for me this would be a recommendation to pass if you haven't read the authors listed above BUT remember this book when you are looking for the go to book for seeking info by using the index, no need to read the whole thing.
Purely taste as I'm certain there are those who will love this book because it's so dry and there's no doubt, it's an excellent resource book - just not an engaging read for me.
Additionally, I found the... bias/views a bit off putting at times. Writing about the US military in Middle East:
"...the countries military would invade, occupy, and reconstruct Afghanistan and later Iraq."
Then covering prisoner interrogation:
"After fifty-one interrogation sessions, a lower level Iraqi prisoner swept up in one of JSOC's raids had provided..."
I personally have issues concerning sanitized generalizations like 'reconstruct', 'swept up' & 'provided', but that's just me.
"The United States is routinely accused of killing civilians while conducting military operations against terrorist groups like ISIS, for example, and indeed sometimes the United States does kill civilians inadvertently as the by-product of strikes against legitimate targets. But in other instances, it's false propaganda..."
Oof, that sure sounds like a gentle way of saying, mistakes were made.
Basically, often the clinical and dry nature of the writing was not engaging and suffered in making any of the facts... human. Plus, there was also zero mention of the cost of any of the surveillance.
So, for me this would be a recommendation to pass if you haven't read the authors listed above BUT remember this book when you are looking for the go to book for seeking info by using the index, no need to read the whole thing.
April 10, 2024
This was a comprehensive history of how our data has been gathered and used by the government over the last fifty or so years. The amount of information available on us is amazing, and the technologies used to gather it are frightening. I won’t think about my tires the same way again.
April 1, 2024
Means of Control is excellently researched and drives home a message about data privacy without ever going out on a limb. Every argument is backed up with events that (despite the best efforts of everyone involved) became public through leaks, litigation, and the reporting of Tau himself. The subject matter is pretty complex but the author does a good job of making it digestible to the average reader. I'm going to buy a tinfoil hat now — with cash.
March 25, 2024
Informative, important, and interesting. Could have been better organized. Appreciated that author explicitly acknowledged what he did not know. Good job of translating technology into understandable descriptions.
March 25, 2024
Yikes. Before reading Means of Control, I thought I understood the various ways my data was being tracked, bought and sold. I was wrong. This is an enlightening and disturbing book.
March 17, 2024
A vital book. I thought I was clued-up to this sort of thing but Tau's tireless research contains genuinely chilling revelations at every turn. At times it's a little repetitive, and I felt the book could probably have been a tad shorter, but that shouldn't detract from the urgent subject matter.
March 15, 2024
Absolutely frightening exploration of how our data is being used by the government spy services.
March 9, 2024
6 stars. No, 7 stars!!!
April 19, 2024
The details of this investigative journalism would be most useful to those involved in the surveillance industry, or contemplating a legal challenge to the industry, or joining the industry. For the average surveilled citizen, the book mostly leads to feeling of fear and resignation.
Most revealing to me was the legal partitioning between the government agencies that use the data and the many surveillance industries around D.C. that sell data to the government.
Most revealing to me was the legal partitioning between the government agencies that use the data and the many surveillance industries around D.C. that sell data to the government.
April 19, 2024
Tau's exhaustive research uncovers chilling revelations throughout this essential read. Though occasionally repetitive, its urgency on the subject matter is undeniable. While a bit shorter might have been more effective, its vital content remains impactful.
April 2, 2024
Exposes a not so shocking reality of data surveillance by governments and corporations. Can get repetitive but it's well-researched and informative
March 30, 2024
Gives specific details on what we all know through intuition. Paints a bleak picture, but certainly is good reading.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews