Excerpt
SUMMARY: What’s the cost of being constantly connected through social media? A new book, “Terms of Service” examines the erosion of privacy in the digital era. Author Jacob Silverman sits down with Jeffrey Brown to discuss what data is being tracked, stored and sold.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Now the latest addition to the NewsHour bookshelf, “Terms of Service.” It’s a look at the erosion of privacy in the age of social media.
Jeffrey Brown recently talked to author Jacob Silverman at Busboys and Poets, a restaurant and bookstore chain in and around Washington.
JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour): Welcome to you.
JACOB SILVERMAN, Author, “Terms of Service”: Thanks for having me.
JEFFREY BROWN: The case you’re making — and it’s a strong case — we don’t know or we don’t seem to care enough about what we’re giving away in our digital lives.
JACOB SILVERMAN: Right.
Well, the same systems that make it so easy to communicate with one another and live these lives where we’re essentially all public figures now also make it very easy to sort of spy on us, to collect personal information, whether you’re companies or governments or other bad actors.
And I think that a lot of people don’t really realize how much is being collected on each and every one of us, that there are big data brokers out there forming dossiers on hundreds of millions of people.
JEFFREY BROWN: There’s been a lot of emphasis on government surveillance. Here, you’re really pointing to what we perhaps don’t know as much about, corporate surveillance.
JACOB SILVERMAN: Right.
Well, actually, corporations have really led the way turning the Internet into what is really a remarkable surveillance machine. Ever since the introduction of the cookie about 15 years ago, we have sort of shifted paths to make the Internet all about monitoring what users do, so that we can direct ads toward them.
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