Rating: 
Summary: how Much IS Big Brother Watching?
Review: 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.
Tony Bradley is a consultant and writer with a focus on network security, antivirus and incident response. He is the About.com Guide for Internet / Network Security (http://netsecurity.about.com), providing a broad range of information security tips, advice, reviews and information. Tony also contributes frequently to other industry publications. For a complete list of his freelance contributions you can visit Essential Computer Security (http://www.tonybradley.com).
Rating:
Summary: Simson at his best
Review: To many people, George Orwell's 1984 epitomizes loss of privacy, in which a totalitarian state uses complete control of the media to maintain its power over the populace. Today's actual usurpation of privacy, which is arguably greater than Orwell could ever have imagined, is much more subtle and incremental. Bits and bytes of personal information are collected by credit bureaus, government agencies, financial institutions, insurance companies, and other organizations, the compilation of which is a dossier of valuable personal information on any given person. As author Simson Garfinkel puts it, the future isn't one dominated by Big Brother but by "a hundred kid brothers that constantly watch and interrupt our daily lives." Database Nation is one of those rare books that comes along every few years and gives its readers pause to think about the effects of the massive computing infrastructure that Western society has laid down. The book explains in great detail how personal privacy has slowly been eroding and the effects of this erosion. Garfinkel details today's myriad threats to privacy, the most notable of which may be the systematic capture of everyday events in our lives. Nearly every purchase we make, every place we travel, every word we say, and every page we read is routinely recorded and made available for later analysis. The result is an unprecedented amount of data surveillance, the effect of which we have just begun to grasp. Database Nation is an important book for two reasons. For the individual, it details the countless ways in which our privacy is slowly yet relentlessly being worn away. For the security professional, the book details the responsibilities that must be assumed to ensure that the Orwellian society envisioned in 1984 doesn't become a reality. This review of mine originally appears at http://www.securitymanagement.com/library/000874.html
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