Fifty years ago, in 1984, George Orwell imagined a future in which privacy was demolished by a totalitarian state that used spies, video surveillance, historical revisionism, and control over the media to maintain its power. Those who worry about personal privacy and identity--especially in this day of technologies that encroach upon these rights--still use Orwell's "Big Brother" language to discuss privacy issues. But the reality is that the age of a monolithic Big Brother is over. And yet the threats are perhaps even more likely to destroy the rights we've assumed were ours. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century shows how, in these early years of the 21st century, advances in technology endanger our privacy in ways never before imagined. Direct marketers and retailers track our every purchase; surveillance cameras observe our movements; mobile phones will soon report our location to those who want to track us; government eavesdroppers listen in on private communications; misused medical records turn our bodies and our histories against us; and linked databases assemble detailed consumer profiles used to predict and influence our behavior. Privacy--the most basic of our civil rights--is in grave peril. Simson Garfinkel--journalist, entrepreneur, and international authority on computer security--has devoted his career to testing new technologies and warning about their implications. This newly revised update of the popular hardcover edition of Database Nation is his compelling account of how invasive technologies will affect our lives in the coming years. It's a timely, far-reaching, entertaining, and thought-provoking look at the serious threats to privacy facing us today. The book poses a disturbing question: how can we protect our basic rights to privacy, identity, and autonomy when technology is making invasion and control easier than ever before? Garfinkel's captivating blend of journalism, storytelling, and futurism is a call to arms. It will frighten, entertain, and ultimately convince us that we must take action now to protect our privacy and identity before it's too late.

Amazon.com® Reader Reviews (Ranked by Helpfulness)

Average Amazon.com® Rating:  Based on 35 Ratings

Quite Useful Exploration of Technology vs. Values - 2006-05-31
Reviewer Rating:
I have been reading books about privacy, notably from Australia where they first got worried about this, and am an admirer of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) based in Washington, D.C. so I can say with confidence that this book is not completely original, but I can also say that it is quite useful. The single best and most original book in this area that I am aware of with my own limitations, is Jeffrey Rothfeder's 1992 classic, Privacy for Sale: How Computerization Has Made Everyone's Private Life an Open Secret.

The author captured my immediate interest when he posited early on that it is capitalism, not totalitarianism, that is the really grave threat to privacy, and then goes on throughout the book to demonstrate how capitalist innovation--and capitalist retribution--can find so many more profitable uses for stolen or insufficiently protected personal information including information about one's precise movements, Internet access, payments, and so on.

I credit the author with providing us with a really SUPERB discussion of an expanded definition of privacy and why it matters for the future, to include how a lack of privacy stifles free speech and individual voting or engagement.

The book is of course timely with the recent revelation of widespread NSA access to telephone records and widespread domestic telephone interceptions without warrants. I am quite certain NSA has full access to all travel and credit card records, and relatively certain that NSA is also obtaining full access to all banking transactions both within and passing through the USA. Eventually, as the dollar collapses and foreigners realize their financial transactions are not private, I suspect that the NSA intrusions will lead directly to a substantial reduction in what people are willing to transfer via US channels, and in this way deprive the US of interest and assets.

The author merits credit for anticipating in 1999 that terrorism would one day be used to justify extensive intrusions against privacy.

Most interestingly, the author reveals, for the first time to my knowledge, that NSA is in the phone card business. All those phone cards that terrorists and criminals have been using evidently have tracking information, and the testimony in the McVeigh case that the author illuminates makes it certain that this source and method will dry up for NSA with those who really matter: literate terrorists and criminals who, like Bin Laden, understand the value of open sources of information and make it their business to follow the literature.

Although the author's information with respect to credit card errors is somewhat dated, it merits comment that in 1991 there were errors in fully 43% of the files of the three main credit bureaus and--this I did NOT know--even if one corrects errors with those three credit bureaus, the corrections do NOT pass down to the 187 independent industry or localized credit bureaus that have purchased the incorrrect data prior to correction. More recently the industry claims a 1% material error factor, but in my own experience, the credit bureaus are quick to post liens or claims, and not at all interested in posting lien cancellations or settlements.

The author spends quite a bit of time, very usefully, in focusing on the fact that identity theft occurs due to lax banking and postal procedures (I for one am very upset over the countless offers of credit I receive in the undefended mail, offers that can be "hijacked" by anyone cruising for such mail before I collect it), and then denouncing the fact that victims of identify theft do not have "standing" in the courts--it is treated as a banking issue.

The book concludes with several scares and big ideas. Car have computers that can communicate--the day is coming when cars will report their owners for speeding, and a husband driving a wife bleeding to death from a farm accident will not be able to override the computerized speed limit. The author concludes that technology is eliminating the expectation of privacy, but I am more concerned by his documentation that we are becoming slaves to computers programmed by morons in bureaucracies.

The author suggests that a major challenge is how to create self-healing systems and I am curious as to why he did not know of Eric Hughes anonymous banking encryption protocols, in which only the bank and the client can see their banking data, which is otherwise constantly encrypted.

The federal government is clearly avoiding accountability, not only with respect to data privacy, but with respect to being accountable for who knew what when. The White House and the Senate clearly knew in 1974-1979 that Peak Oil was upon us (see my review of Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy and also of Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil), and deliberate decisions were made to conceal the facts from the public in order to keep the bribes coming and the easy elections going. We wasted 30 years because of decisions that can now be judged to be treasonous and retrospectively impeachable.

The book has acceptable coverage of biometics, RFID, public video, and commercial space imagery. In the latter, the book has a mistake SPOT Image likes to take credit for many things, and they evidently claim credit for creating a C-130 portable ground receiving station. This is not true. Colonel "Snake" Clark in the office of the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Air Force, conceptualized and oversaw the development of that capability which made a major difference to air operations in Bosnia among other places, as it made possible near real time seasonally accurate wide area imagery feeds directly into the Air Force mission rehearsal systems.

To end on a positive note, I point to page 108 of the book, where the author discusses inexpensive discreet video surveillance systems that can be used to keep an eye on kids, cats, baby sitters, realtors showing one's home, and so on. Technology does have its uses for the individual, and I will end by saying that I found this book to be a very professional and useful overview of the implications of both digital technology, and the personal information that technology can capture, store, manipulate, share, and exploit.

A little dated... - 2007-12-28
Reviewer Rating:
Overall this is a good book, provided that you take it for what it is - an opinion piece. There are plenty of facts included in this book (many of which are out-of-date). However, the volume of facts does not support the volume of conclusions drawn by the author. For example:

Early on the author states that a failure to create a national database, instead of several independent ones as we have now, had lead to security issues and that the single national database would be better. He does not provide supporting material on WHY it would be better. There are other examples in the book that you can find for yourself.

Should you buy it? Maybe consider borrowing it, checking it out from the library, or getting a used one on eBay (mine will be there soon ;-)

Rapidly increasing technologies invade our rights to privacy - 2004-09-02
Reviewer Rating:
As we embark on the 21st century, advances in technology endanger our privacy in ways never before imagined. Database Nation: The Death of Privacy in the 21st Century, by Simson Garfinkel is the compelling account of how invasive technologies will affect our lives in the coming years. It's a timely, far-reaching, entertaining, and thought-provoking look at the serious threats to privacy facing us today.

Garfinkel's book does cover a lot of familiar ground, making the issue of privacy more personal to the average person. For example, he describes how cell phone networks can be used to track preferences and physical movement. He also goes into significant detail about advanced identification technologies, including retina scans and DNA analysis, that can be used to identify and track individuals, but those technologies only serve as a lead-in to the issue Garfinkel seems to regard as the most serious: medical privacy.

Chapter 6 provides strong details of the Medical Information Bureau. The MIB collects medical information entered on insurance forms and into personal records and sells that information to companies that need to set insurance premiums for applicants. What gives the MIB the right to collect that information? Garfinkel reveals that patients give them that permission when they consent to receive treatment.

At the end of Database Nation, Garfinkel calls on our nation's leaders and government to establish an executive agency charged with enforcing existing privacy laws and acting as an ombudsman for individual privacy. The new medical privacy standards the White House offered in early 2000 go part of the way to solving some of the problems Garfinkel describes, but in all I believe his solution is far to weak to result in meaningful privacy reform, nor will it be able to keep up with the ever changing technology.

Database Nation continues the growing tradition of books that cast technology in its social context. And as a doctoral student in leadership and technology, I find it heartening to read a book that so thoroughly examines technology's role in society.

how Much IS Big Brother Watching? - 2005-02-08
Reviewer Rating:
This is an older book, but one that I specifically requested after reading books like Myth of Homeland Security by Marcus Ranum and Beyond Fear by Bruce Schneier. While those books related directly to homeland or national security in the wake of the 9/11 attack this book predates the attack but describes an Orwellian society where Big Brother monitors everything and privacy is a facade.

When I was in high school I read George Orwell's 1984. It is a work of fiction, but in many ways present society and technology have surpassed Orwell's vision. Simson Garfinkel paints a chilling picture of the complete lack of privacy today because we have the technology to store and retrieve almost every transaction and occurrence that goes on in our lives.

When you make a cell phone call records are kept of the area you called from and the number you called. When you make a purchase with a credit card or ATM/Debit card you create a record of where you were at a specific time and date as well as what you purchased. Medical records tell a lot about a person and are not as protected as people believe. A recent Supreme Court decision essentially states that an ISP can legally intercept and view your email without violating wiretap laws. Common, everyday activities capture and store minute details about your life.

This book offers few solutions, but does an excellent job of describing the problem in a compelling way. Everyone should read this book to learn what a facade your privacy really is.

(...)

Good, but lacks other side of the story... - 2004-11-10
Reviewer Rating:
Good book, especially for someone living on the other side of the world... From European point of view, such privacy violations are something unbelievable. Garfinkel's book simply shows us the hazards of modern technology, and convinces us that our European privacy protecting laws are a good thing, despite sometimes being used to cover bribery or theft.
Sometimes `Database Nation' seemed so naGǦve, but to understand it, we must notice it was written few months before attack on WTC. Now we can see how governments are trying to know everything about everybody and the only reason for that is protecting us from terrorism. Nice idea, but Garfinkel has already predicted it - he wrote that a big terrorist attack would happen, even if we maximize security and privacy violations cannot stop really bad people.
As I wrote before - I have never been in the States, so sometimes I was reading this book as some kind of `weird guide to the USA'. Some of described pitfalls can be seen in Europe as well, but usually we do not expect our medical records to be seen by anybody... maybe because in most European countries medical insurance is run mainly by the government. And here is the point, where this book lacks some kind of perspective. What do you think is better: having your medical record sold, or die because funds of some emergency stations are so low, that only one ambulance in fifty-thousand-people-city is on duty? Is it better to protect privacy, or to highlight crooks? The highly illegal under Polish law so-called `Jachnicki list' was a list of people who cheated and deceived a lot of honest citizens. Giving detailed information including name, adress, birthdate and PESEL (unique number every Pole is assigned at birth) about those people, the creators have broken Personal Data Protection Act, and were forced by government officials to stop publishing that list. This is the other side of fighting for permanent privacy - and Garfinkel doesn't write anything about it...

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