Review | In Privacy is Power, Clarissa Véliz warns of an impending data-driven dystopia
New book by Oxford professor Carissa Véliz explains why tech companies hoover up our personal information – and how to regain control
Privacy is Power by Carissa Véliz, Bantam Press
It’s impossible to read the introduction to Carissa Véliz’s Privacy is Power without hearing in the mind’s ear the saturnine tones of voice-overs from The Twilight Zone.
“They are watching us. They know I’m writing these words. They know you are reading them. Governments and hundreds of corporations are spying on you and me, and everyone we know. […] They want to know who we are, what we think, where we hurt. They want to predict and influence our behaviour.”
But this is not fiction, and Véliz is no tabloid scaremonger looking to profit from our paranoia, but rather an Oxford University philosophy professor specialising in data ethics. The rest of her vitally important book is written in a brisk, straightforward style that clearly communicates not only the nature of the threat to our privacy from the harvesting and trading of information about us, but the moral responsibility each of us has towards others in the management of our data.
A data-driven dystopia is almost upon us. The right television comparison is Black Mirror.