“I Have Nothing to Hide”: And 20 Other Myths About Surveillance and Privacy

Attorney Boghosian (Spying on Democracy) refutes common misconceptions that lead to public apathy about surveillance technology in this alarming yet clearheaded account. Without appropriate oversight by policymakers and independent government agencies, Boghosian argues, tech products such as Google Nest and Amazon-owned Ring can be compromised by hackers or appropriated by police and used to circumvent due process. She contends that surveillance initiatives launched as part of the “war on terror” have been “abject failures,” and notes that one NSA program continues to collect metadata from hundreds of millions of phone calls annually, despite an oversight board’s finding that between 2001 and 2014, such bulk collection programs failed to make a “concrete difference” in any counterterrorism investigation. Boghosian also describes how the East German secret police and today’s Chinese Communist Party use surveillance technology to stifle political dissent and control citizen behavior, and notes that the U.S. National Guard has used drones to track Black Lives Matter protests. In addition to calling for Congress to update digital privacy laws, Boghosian offers advice for how individuals can “stave off the surveillance state” by using encryption technologies and switching to a search engine that “doesn’t track you the way Google does.” The result is an accessible and informative introduction to the issues surrounding the rise in surveillance technology. (July)