Product Description

In No Place to Hide, award-winning Washington Post reporter Robert O'Harrow, Jr., pulls back the curtain on an unsettling trend: the emergence of a data-driven surveillance society intent on giving us the conveniences and services we crave, like cell phones, discount cards, and electronic toll passes, while watching us more closely than ever before. He shows that since the September 11, 2001, terror attacks, the information industry giants have been enlisted as private intelligence services for homeland security. And at a time when companies routinely collect billions of details about nearly every American adult, No Place to Hide shines a bright light on the sorry state of information security, revealing how people can lose control of their privacy and identities at any moment.

Now with a new afterword that details the latest security breaches and the government's failing efforts to stop them, O'Harrow shows us that, in this new world of high-tech domestic intelligence, there is literally no place to hide.

As O'Harrow writes, "This book is all about you and your personal information -- and the story isn't pretty."

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252825 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-09
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 pages

Amazon.com
George Orwell envisioned Big Brother as an outgrowth of a looming totalitarian state, but in this timely survey Robert O'Harrow Jr. portrays a surveillance society that's less centralized and more a joint public/private venture. Indeed, the most frightening aspect of the Washington Post reporter's thoroughly researched and naggingly disquieting chronicle lies in the matter-of-fact nature of information hunters and gatherers and the insatiable systems they've concocted. Here is a world where data is gathered by relatively unheralded organizations that smooth the way for commercial entities to find the good customers and avoid dicey ones. Government of course too has an interest in the data that's been mined. Information is power, especially when trying to find the bad guys. The mutually compatible skills and needs shared by private and public snoopers were fusing prior to the attacks of 9/11, but the process has since gone into hyperdrive. O'Harrow weaves together vignettes to record the development of the "security-industrial complex," taking pains to personalize his chronicle of a movement that's remained (perhaps purposefully) faceless. Recognizing the appeal of state-of-the-art systems that can track down a murderer/rapist with heretofore unimaginable speed, the author recognizes, too, that the same devices can mistakenly destroy reputations and cast a pall over a free society. In a post-9/11 world where homeland security often trumps personal liberty, this work is an eye-opener for those who take their privacy for granted. --Steven Stolder

From Publishers Weekly
The amount of personal data collected on ordinary citizens has grown steadily over the decades, and after 9/11, corporations that had been amassing this information largely for marketing purposes saw an opportunity to strengthen their ties with the government. But what do we really know about these data collectors, and are they trustworthy? O'Harrow, a Pulitzer finalist who covers privacy and technology issues for the Washington Post, tracks the explosive growth of this surveillance industry, with keen attention to the problems that "inevitable mistakes" along the way have created in mainstream society, from victims of identity theft who have been placed in financial jeopardy to travelers detained at the airport because of the similarity of their names to those of criminal suspects. O'Harrow gives the government's push for increased surveillance heavy play, but he effectively presents the story's many sides, as when he juxtaposes the perspectives of a Justice Department attorney, a civil liberties activist and Senator Patrick Leahy in the first chapter. His evenhanded account underscores the caveats of surveillance, as well-intentioned people can deploy technologies for all the right reasons only to see their apparatuses misused later on. This is a thought-provoking, comprehensive account that strikes the right balance between dismissive and alarmist.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
We live in an ever more convenient society. We use credit cards, buy books on Amazon, reserve plane tickets on Expedia, bid for antiques on eBay, get cash at ATMs and find jobs on Monster. We use key cards to open hotel rooms, EZ-Pass to pay tolls and GPS to get directions. We send e-mail, fill prescriptions and sexual needs on the Internet, and pay bills electronically.

These conveniences generate data. In the "old" days, we did not leave behind a readily accessible, electronic trail of our purchases, conversations, whereabouts and transactions. We took for granted the anonymity and privacy of our ordinary, day-to-day lives. No more. Today, we are constantly tagged, monitored, studied, sorted and tracked by a vast array of institutions and organizations -- private and public. As Robert O'Harrow Jr. details in No Place to Hide, it is worse than we could ever have imagined. In this revealing book, O'Harrow makes clear that Americans need to think seriously about these issues now -- before it is too late for us to decide that we care.

O'Harrow unveils a modern world riddled with seemingly innocuous private businesses, government agencies and software programs with such obscure names as ChoicePoint, Acxiom, Matrix, DARPA, Seisint, HOLe and NORA. Unbeknownst to most of us, these institutions and technologies are relentlessly compiling information about our names, addresses, license plates, Social Security numbers, religions, incomes, family members, sexual orientations, friends, purchases, mortgages, bank accounts, credit card transactions, credit standing, parking tickets, criminal arrests and convictions, Web browsing, e-mail correspondence, newspaper and magazine preferences, cell phone activity, vacations, fingerprints, insurance coverage, facial images, DNA, drug prescriptions and beer of choice. Computers have made possible what was barely science fiction 20 years ago.

How do they get this information? For the most part, we give it to them, though usually unwittingly, with almost every step we take. Over the past several years, with the help of increasingly sophisticated computing systems and advances in artificial intelligence, these institutions and organizations have accumulated billions of data points about American citizens, which they then share with or sell to one another and to the government. As O'Harrow notes, "personal data has become a commodity that is bought and sold essentially like sow bellies."

Why do these companies and agencies do this? For you, of course. By gathering and sharing such data, they protect you from identify theft and credit card fraud, enable marketers to offer you precisely the right products to satisfy your tastes and needs, ensure that your fellow passengers are not terrorists, locate missing children and deadbeat dads, help police catch smugglers and murderers, and generally provide a safer society. And, in fact, they really do these things.

So what's the problem? Should we care that there's no place to hide? What dangers are posed by this more convenient, more secure society? In this chilling narrative, O'Harrow identifies the risks and vividly illustrates them with powerful real-life stories.

First, there is the simple risk of mistake. The data in these systems, according to Ole Poulsen, one of HOLe's creators, are "full of errors and noise and wrong information." As a result, individuals are denied insurance, credit, employment, the right to board an airplane, and even the right to vote when the system spins out inaccurate information. And, as O'Harrow persuasively demonstrates, correcting the record can be a nightmare.

Second, there is the risk of public disclosure. We regard much of this information as private. But hackers can all too easily capture it and use it to humiliate, blackmail and impersonate us. The Federal Trade Commission reports that in a typical year, 10 million Americans were the victims of identity theft, resulting in bounced checks, loan denials, harassment from debt collectors, cancelled insurance and false accusations of criminal conduct.

Third, there is the risk that government will use this information not only to ferret out terrorists, but also to suppress dissent and impose conformity. In the 1990s, this technology was developed primarily by private companies to enable marketers to target and profile consumers. After Sept. 11, however, the FBI, CIA, NSA, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security aggressively sought access to these business databases, creating a vast private-public partnership in the exchange of such information. Moreover, the USA Patriot Act took full advantage of the post-9/11 crisis mentality and authorized a wide range of previously restricted government surveillance and data-gathering activities. Although the stated goal of these activities is to ensure our security, history teaches that once government has such information, it will inevitably use it to harass and silence those who question its policies.

Finally, O'Harrow warns that such massive invasion of privacy and intrusion into our ordinary anonymity may well alter the very fabric of our society. Once we understand that our every move is being tracked, monitored, recorded and collated, will we retain our essential sense of individual autonomy and personal dignity? Can freedom flourish in such a society? Is this the long awaited coming of 1984, the Brave New World of the 21st century, or will we somehow continue business, and life, as usual?

Reviewed by Geoffrey R. Stone
Copyright 2005, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Customer Reviews

Everywhere you go, someone is watching you.
Whether its through cameras, ATMs, your cell phone, your credit cards or anything digital, someone knows where you are at all times.

Roger O'Harrow has written an unbelievably real account of our surveillance society. It's very real, and doesn't take much: cameras, ATMs, your cell phone, your credit cards or anything digital, and they know where you are. Big government may have weak regulations about compiling your information, but big corporations have no restrictions on what information they can gather and store on you.

Orwellian society has already started.

Very thorough
This book is the result of a very thorough and detailed investigation. Some of the chapters are more exciting than you'd expect from a book like this. For some other chapters you need a little interest in politics.

Gives you an overview of the current situation
Robert O'Harrow writes about what data can be collected on individuals, who collects it and who uses it. In a nutshell, data is collected by the various parts of the government (CIA, NSA, etc) and private businesses. Some of the private businesses sell the collected data further, and some of this is also used by law enforcement (including PIs and 'bounty hunters'). This latter issue can be of concern if you think you might one day have to deal with an disgruntled ex-spouse, ex-employee (or a current employees ex-) or have a relative who might be searched by bounty hunters.

If you have an understanding of the technical aspects of what can be done with information technology, the book probably would not surprise you much at all. However, you might still find it interesting (I know I did) for providing a clearer picture of the extent of data gathering. The only drawback with the book is that, overall, it can be a bit tedious to read.

In any case this book is a good 'companion' to a book of privacy called "How to be invisible" by J.J. Luna. Together with the information in Luna's book, it helps provide an answer to the question "why should I need to be invisible?"

While Robert O'Harrow does not write about what you can do to minimize the data gathered about you, he helps provide a motivation for you to take necessary steps so that that data can not be used to connect your actual name with your actual residence. How to do this (legally) is discussed in J.J. Luna's book.

How to Be Invisible: The Essential Guide to Protecting Your Personal Privacy, Your Assets, and Your Life (Revised Edition)

[Later addition: I happened to find a website that sells a DVD titled "Privacy is dead", containing a presentation by Steven Rambam (a P.I.). Steven's presentation is about the amount of information available on each person in the U.S. and how easily this can be retrieved. I have not viewed the DVD so I do not know how 'good' it is, but if you are interested, you can find it with a search engine. Recommendation: check the Wikipedia article on the speaker before buying the DVD.]