Data and Goliath is the newest book by Bruce Schneier. I have been following Mr. Schneier ever since reading Neal Stepheson’s Cryptonomicon. I have subscribed to his newsletter and seen him speak. With that stated, his new book is very accessible to a wide audience, much more so than his last book Liars and Outliers. It is not a book on cryptography as Applied Cryptography: Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C, is either. It is uniquely positioned to open societies eyes and a short list of actions society as a whole needs to take to reign in corporations and governments to allow us to take back control of our privacy.

The book is broken into three parts and ties a lot of what was revealed by Edward Snowden and the NSA PRISM project into a nice package of what is happening now and what will continue to happen if we don’t stand up and take action. Snowden revelations are sprinkled throughout the book. If the outrage most of the world expressed didn’t make sense to you after hearing about what the NSA, GHCQ, and other government organizations have been doing this book should make it clear. He also makes it clear that not just governments need the data, but the business model of the web is personalized data as well. The Lightbeam plugin is mentioned in the book, it makes browsing the web an adventure again, seeing just who is tracking you every time you go to a website.

Again and again Mr. Schneier presses the reader into thinking this is all doom and gloom but then pulls us back to show how good things can come of data and tracking, if we are allowed to be the ones who choose what to share. He points out early on that Angry Birds tracks our location, not because it is used in the game, but because they can then sell that data to a broker, who will then resell it to a buyer. I was not aware that Europe had stronger laws already on the books than the US that help citizens protect their privacy.

You will be hard pressed to find a more concise book on a defining issue of our internet generation. There are 121 pages of notes in the back of the hard copy as well allowing you to dig deeper into each topic. Many of the suggestions are high level policy changes that need to be made and citizens can have a big impact on that. The jacket reviews would lead on to think that if they read the book and follow some steps they can hide all of their data, that is not going to happen. It is a good book and well worth a few afternoons of reading.

Go buy it our get it at your local library.