Review of Totalt övervakad (2024)
Anonymous (writer).
Read in 2024.
Contemporary digital mass surveillance by commercial and state actors. In brief, the argument is that search-engine operators like Google and social-media platforms like Meta have adopted a business model that makes surveillance of their own users necessary, not incidental. State actors undermine privacy primarily to make law enforcement and espionage easier, which is contrary to democracy.
The book has a foreword by Jan Jonsson, the CEO of a VPN company. The rest of the book has no listed author but is attributed to the VPN company.
The editing is a little sloppy, which is what I expect from a book-length advertisement for the company’s services. More surprisingly, the risk assessment on the subject of unintentional leaks is barely tempered by the perspective of tech-industry insiders. It’s mostly the usual Snowden and Zuboff material, very well presented but as if by journalists.