Privacy is Power

A bracing call to arms to fight back against digital surveillance before it is too late. If you’re one of those readers who gave up before getting to the end of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshama Zoboff’s academic doorstopper, this is a good place to start. – Richard Waters * Financial Times *I have read a lot of books on privacy and the surveillance economy. This is the best I’ve ever found. Lovely clear writing backed by an Oxford don’s intellectual firepower. Could not recommend it more. * Barton Gellman, Author of Dark Mirror *An essential guide to one of the most pressing modern issues. * Hannah Fry, author of Hello World *An Economist BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: galvanises an important conversation. * Economist *We didn’t see digital surveillance coming, but today it’s threatening democracy and basic freedoms. If you want to understand why privacy matters more than ever before, and how we can preserve it in an age of data grabbing, read this book. * Nigel Warburton, author of A Little History of Philosophy *Powerful – Will Hutton * Observer *A forceful call for us to tame the data economy by reclaiming our privacy … and our power. * Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet *Privacy is Power is an intelligent, persuasive and disquieting manifesto for taking back control of our data. – Cathleen Mair * The Idler *In this bold, original, and engaging book, Carissa Véliz makes a compelling case for the revolutionary goal of reclaiming privacy from the grip of a destructive data economy. While many have lamented the ills of surveillance capitalism, Véliz’s courageous manifesto paves a clear path for regaining power–taking back our ill-gotten information from tech companies and data brokers and reinvigorating democracy in the process. * Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology and co-author of The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy *How much does it matter that every day we unwittingly hand over more and more of our personal data to internet giants? In this smart, stylishly written, and alarming volume Carissa Veliz argues that it matters a great deal and that we don’t have to put up with it. Essential reading for those of us who click ‘agree’ ten times a day. * Jonathan Wolff, author of An Introduction to Moral Philosophy *

Carissa Veliz is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Institute for Ethics in AI, as well as a Tutorial Fellow at Hertford College, at the University of Oxford. Veliz has published articles in the Guardian, The New York Times, New Statesman, and the Independent. Her academic work has been published in The Harvard Business Review, Nature Electronics, Nature Energy, and The American Journal of Bioethics, among other journals. She is the editor of the Oxford Handbook of Digital Ethics.