Non-fiction Books

Why Privacy Matters and Misconceptions

  • Neil Richards, Why Privacy Matters
  • Carissa Véliz, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data
  • Heidi Boghosian, I Have Nothing to Hide and 20 other Myths about Surveillance and Privacy
  • Daniel J. Solove, Nothing to Hide: The False Tradeoff between Privacy and Security

The Current Digital Reality

  • Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
  • Bruce Schneier, Data and Goliath
  • John Fasman, We See it All: Liberty and Justice in the Age of Perpetual Surveillance
  • Edward S. Herman & Noam Chomksy, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media
  • Bruce Schneier, A Hacker’s Mind: How the Powerful Bend Society’s Rules, and how to Bend them Back
  • Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You
  • Laura Dodsworth & Patrick Fagan, Free Your Mind: The New World of Manipulation and how to Resist it
  • Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity
  • Nicholas Carr, The Shallows: What the Internet is doing to our Brains
  • Laurent Richard & Sandrine Riguad, Pegasus: How a Spy in your Pocket threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity and Democracy
  • Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention and How to Think Deeply Again
  • Sarah Brayne, Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion and Future of Policing

The USA’s Surveillance Regime and the 5 Eyes Intelligence Network

  • Glenn Greenwald, No Place to Hide
  • Edward Snowden, Permanent Record
  • Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet
  • Richard Kerbaj, The Secret History of the Five Eyes: The Untold Story of the International Spy Network
  • Nilz Melzer, The Trial of Julian Assange: A Story of Persecution

Cybersecurity and Technological Vulnerability

  • Bruce Schneier, Click Here to Kill Everybody: Security and Survival in a Hyper-connected World
  • Daniel J. Solove & Woodrow Hartzog, Breached: Why Data Security Laws Fail and how to Improve it

Digital Authoritarianism Outside the ‘West’

  • Marc Owen Jones, Digital Authoritarianism in the Middle East: Deception, Disinformation and Social Media
  • Geoffrey Cain, The Perfect Police State: An Undercover Odyssey into China’s Terrifying Surveillance Dystopia of the Future
  • Josh Chin and Liza Lin, Surveillance State: Inside China’s Quest Launch a New Era of Social Control
  • Kai Strittmatter, We Have Been Harmonised: Life in China’s Surveillance State
  • Ian Williams, Every Breath You Take: China’s New Tyranny
  • Jonathan E. Hillman, The Digital Silk Road: China’s Quest to Wire the World and Win the Future

Fiction Books

  • George Orwell, 1984
  • Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
  • Ken MacLeod, Intrusion
  • Barry Eisler, The God’s Eye View
  • Philip K. Dick, Minority Report

Academic Articles (a Selection of my Favorites)

General Privacy and Surveillance Society

  • Solove, Daniel. (2020). The Myth of the Privacy Paradox. SSRN Electronic Journal. 10.2139/ssrn.3536265.
  • Zuboff, Shoshana. “Big other: surveillance capitalism and the prospects of an information civilization.” Journal of information technology 30.1 (2015): 75-89.
  • Solove, Daniel J. “Conceptualizing privacy.” Calif. L. Rev. 90 (2002): 1087.
  • Dragu, Tiberiu, and Yonatan Lupu. “Digital authoritarianism and the future of human rights.” International Organization 75.4 (2021): 991-1017.

Microtargeting and Public Manipulation

  • Tufekci, Zeynep. “Engineering the public: Big data, surveillance and computational politics.” First Monday (2014).
  • Bernays, Edward L. “The engineering of consent.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 250.1 (1947): 113-120.
  • Gorton, W. A. (2016). Manipulating Citizens: How Political Campaigns’ Use of Behavioral Social Science Harms Democracy. New Political Science, 38(1), 61–80.
  • Bennett, Colin J. and David Lyon. “Data-driven elections: implications and challenges for democratic societies “. Internet Policy Review 8.4 (2019). Web. 23 Jun. 2024.
  • Gorton, W. A. (2016). Manipulating Citizens: How Political Campaigns’ Use of Behavioral Social Science Harms Democracy. New Political Science, 38(1), 61–80.
  • Zuiderveen Borgesius, F J, et al.. “Online Political Microtargeting: Promises and Threats for Democracy”. Utrecht Law Review, vol. 14, no. 1, 2018, p. 82-96, doi:10.18352/ulr.420.

The Global Push for Client Side Scanning (Spyware) and Lawful Access (Breaking Encryption)

  • Abelson, Harold, et al. “Bugs in our pockets: The risks of client-side scanning.” Journal of Cybersecurity 10.1 (2024): tyad020.
  • Anderson, Ross. “Chat control or child protection?.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2210.08958 (2022).
  • Hewson, Eloise C., and Peter S. Harrison. “Talking in the dark: Rules to facilitate open debate about lawful access to strongly encrypted information.” Computer Law & Security Review 40 (2021): 105526.
  • Abelson, Harold, et al. “Keys under doormats.” Communications of the ACM 58.10 (2015): 24-26.
  • Manpearl, Eric. “Preventing Going Dark: A Sober Analysis and Reasonable Solution to Preserve Security in the Encryption Debate.” U. Fla. JL & Pub. Pol’y 28 (2017): 65.
  • van Daalen, O. L. “The right to encryption: Privacy as preventing unlawful access.” Computer Law & Security Review 49 (2023): 105804.
  • Kamara, Seny, et al. “Outside looking in: Approaches to content moderation in end-to-end encrypted systems.” arXiv preprint arXiv:2202.04617 (2022).
  • Ludvigsen, Kaspar Rosager, Shishir Nagaraja, and Angela Daly. “YASM (Yet Another Surveillance Mechanism).” arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.14601 (2022).
  • Mayer, Jonathan. “Content moderation for end-to-end encrypted messaging.” Princeton University (2019).