Privacy is Power

Apr 21, 2025 4:53 AM

Author:Carissa Véliz

Privacy is Power

An Economist BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

As the data economy grows in power, Carissa Véliz exposes how our privacy is eroded by big tech and governments, why that matters and what we can do about it.

The moment you check your phone in the morning you are giving away your data. Before you've even switched off your alarm, a whole host of organisations have been alerted to when you woke up, where you slept, and with whom. As you check the weather, scroll through your 'suggested friends' on Facebook, you continually compromise your privacy.

Without your permission, or even your awareness, tech companies are harvesting your information, your location, your likes, your habits, and sharing it amongst themselves. They're not just selling your data. They're selling the power to influence you. Even when you've explicitly asked them not to. And it's not just you. It's all your contacts too.

Digital technology is stealing our personal data and with it our power to make free choices. To reclaim that power and democracy, we must protect our privacy.

What can we do? So much is at stake. Our phones, our TVs, even our washing machines are spies in our own homes. We need new regulation. We need to pressure policy-makers for red lines on the data economy. And we need to stop sharing and to adopt privacy-friendly alternatives to Google, Facebook and other online platforms.

Short, terrifying, practical: Privacy is Power highlights the implications of our laid-back attitude to data and sets out how we can take back control.

If you liked The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, you'll love Privacy is Power because it provides a philosophical perspective on the politics of privacy, and it offers a very practical outlook, both for policymakers and ordinary citizens.

Reviews

A bracing call to arms to fight back against digital surveillance before it is too late. If you're one of those readers who gave up before getting to the end of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Shoshama Zoboff's academic doorstopper, this is a good place to start.

—— Richard Waters , Financial Times

I have read a *lot* of books on privacy and the surveillance economy. This is the best I've ever found. Lovely clear writing backed by an Oxford don's intellectual firepower. Could not recommend it more.

—— Barton Gellman, Author of Dark Mirror

An essential guide to one of the most pressing modern issues.

—— Hannah Fry, author of Hello World

An Economist BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: galvanises an important conversation.

—— Economist

We didn't see digital surveillance coming, but today it's threatening democracy and basic freedoms. If you want to understand why privacy matters more than ever before, and how we can preserve it in an age of data grabbing, read this book.

—— Nigel Warburton, author of A Little History of Philosophy

Powerful

—— Will Hutton , Observer

A forceful call for us to tame the data economy by reclaiming our privacy ... and our power.

—— Jonathan Zittrain, author of The Future of the Internet

Privacy is Power is an intelligent, persuasive and disquieting manifesto for taking back control of our data.

—— Cathleen Mair , The Idler

In this bold, original, and engaging book, Carissa Véliz makes a compelling case for the revolutionary goal of reclaiming privacy from the grip of a destructive data economy. While many have lamented the ills of surveillance capitalism, Véliz's courageous manifesto paves a clear path for regaining power--taking back our ill-gotten information from tech companies and data brokers and reinvigorating democracy in the process.

—— Evan Selinger, Professor of Philosophy, Rochester Institute of Technology and co-author of The Cambridge Handbook of Consumer Privacy

How much does it matter that every day we unwittingly hand over more and more of our personal data to internet giants? In this smart, stylishly written, and alarming volume Carissa Veliz argues that it matters a great deal and that we don't have to put up with it. Essential reading for those of us who click 'agree' ten times a day.

—— Jonathan Wolff, author of An Introduction to Moral Philosophy

You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it', Scott McNealy once said to reporters. This book is a thoughtful response to the claim of Sun Microsystem's co-founder. It shows that we still have privacy to lose and why we should protect privacy for ourselves and for others. Engagingly written, clear and admirably brief, Véliz shows how we ended up with societies built around the buying and selling of personal data; why this is bad personally and politically; and what we can do to change things. A fantastic little book.

—— Anabelle Lever, author of On Privacy

Christie's a former nurse and she's such a powerful writer on caring and what it means to do it

—— Jane Garvey , i

Christie Watson writes with clarity, generosity and wisdom; her words make us feel less alone

—— Joanna Cannon, author of Breaking and Mending

This beautiful book captures magnificently the rawness, courage and tenderness of nursing. It made me cry, smile and gasp out loud. It sings with humanity

—— Rachel Clarke, author of Dear Life

A call to arms and soul-baring personal odyssey, this book will set hearts and minds on fire. Very few writers can make you care this much, and make you laugh, bawl and stay up all night reading to the final page. Christie Watson writes with the sharpest wit, the finest observations, and has a heart as deep and wild as a river

—— Emma Jane Unsworth, author of Adults

Christie Watson has once again proved she is the pre-eminent voice of the nursing memoir

—— Nathan Filer, author of This Book Will Change Your Mind About Mental Health

Marvellous... A chronicle of the human experience written with all the sensitivity and empathy of an experienced nurse. A courageous account of our inequitable healthcare system. A magnificent collection of stories that describes primal pain, the joy of human connection and the beauty of life through the lens of a compassionate nurse, daughter and mother

—— Dr Rupy Aujla, author of The Doctor's Kitchen

An urgent, powerful, beautiful book, filled with courage, love and hope

—— John Sutherland, author of Crossing the Line: lessons from a life on duty

As we all try to work out the impact of COVID-19 on our lives, The Courage to Care is essential reading about the extraordinary work that nurses carry out every day

—— Caroline Elton, author of Also Human: the inner lives of doctors

This book looks inside the heart of a profession, the life of a family, and the condition of being human. Beautiful, thoughtful and compelling

—— Kathryn Mannix, author of With the End in Mind

Absolutely beautiful writing, Christie Watson captures both the intense joy and searing heartbreak of love

—— Jo Swinson

A salute to the profession, the book is also a mediation on motherhood

—— Kate Womersley , Times Literary Supplement

An insightful reminder of exactly how vital it is to treat one another with kindness and compassion, at a time when we need it most

—— Woman's Own

A no-nonsense crib sheet on the state of the world and how to help it

—— The I Newspaper

If his book falls into the hands of the powerful then it could just save the planet. At the very least, it will provide some thought-provoking facts

—— The I Newspaper

Punchy and to the point. No beating around the bush. This brilliant book contains all the information we need to have in our back pocket in order to move forward

—— Christiana Figueres, author of The Future We Choose

Visceral and haunting...This novel's prose soars with its transporting descriptions of the planet's landscapes and their dwindling inhabitants, and contains many wonderful meditations on our responsibilities to our earthly housemates...The Last Migration is a nervy and well-crafted novel, one that lingers long after its voyage is over

—— The New York Times Book Review

Dreamy, elegiac... both an adventure story and a piece of speculative climate fiction, constantly slipping between a kind of literary realism and more magical elements, between moments of domestic drama and sweeping epic... an aching and poignant book, and one that's pressing in its timeliness... It's also a book about love, about trying to understand and accept the creatureliness that exists within our selves, and what it means to be a human animal, that we might better accommodate our own wildness within the world.

—— Fiona Wright , Guardian Australia

Gutting and gorgeous, The Last Migration is an astounding meditation on love, trauma, and the cost of survival. With soulful prose and deep empathy, Charlotte McConaghy weaves parallel stories of a woman and a world on the brink of devastation, but never without hope. Equal parts love letter and dirge, this is a true force of a book that I read holding my breath from its start to its symphonic finish

—— Julia Fine, author of What Should Be Wild

At a time when it feels like we're at the end of the world, this novel about a different kind of end of the world serves as both catharsis and escape

—— Harper's Bazaar US

This novel is enchanting, but not in some safe, fairy-tale sense. Charlotte McConaghy has harnessed the rough magic that sears our souls. I recommend The Last Migration with my whole heart

—— Geraldine Brooks, Author of March

Powerful...Vibrant...Unique... If worry is the staple emotion that most climate fiction evokes in its readers, The Last Migration - the novelistic equivalent of an energizing cold plunge - flutters off into more expansive territory

—— Los Angeles Times

How far do we have to go to escape our pasts and find ourselves? Charlotte McConaghy’s luminous, brilliant novel, set in a future when wildlife is rapidly becoming extinct, is indeed about loss—but what makes it miraculous is that it is also about both the glimpses of hope and the shattering persistence of love, if we are only brave enough to acknowledge them. Written in prose as gorgeous as the crystalline beauty of the Arctic, The Last Migration is deeply moving, haunting, and, yes, important

—— Caroline Leavitt, author of Pictures of You

A lovely, haunting novel about a troubled woman’s quest to follow the last surviving Arctic terns on their southerly migration. As she tries to make peace with the ghosts of her painful past, she must choose whether she herself wants – or deserves – to survive, in spite of everything she, and all humans, have destroyed and lost

—— Ceridwen Dovey, author of In the Garden of the Fugitives

This book is a powerful - and entertaining - corrective to the idea that the only hopes that matter on this planet are those of our own species.

—— Tim Adams , Guardian

Macdonald has a wonderful gift for exploring the intersection between nature and our experience of it, in writing that is both lyrical and impassioned.

—— Hannah Beckerman , Observer

One of the most beautiful memoirs I've ever read. This story will say with you long after you put the book down

—— Emma Gannon

I just turned the last page (reluctantly!). A bold, often brutal exploration of memory, grief and love. Full of hope and heart. I can't recommend it enough

—— Terri White, author of Coming Undone

A brave, brilliant book that is both beautiful and important. Read it then buy it for all your friends

—— Hello!

Gavanndra's memoir The Consequences of Love is absolutely beautiful. It's compelling, heartbreaking, sweet, honest, fascination. I recommend it HIGHLY. I absolutely LOVED it.

—— Marian Keyes

This stunning exploration of grief is so well written and profoundly moving

—— Good Housekeeping

An elegant study of grief and memory

—— Guardian

Hodge pours heartbreak and love into the pages of a book that never pretends to know the answers, and is all the better for it

—— Sunday Times

An eye-opening snapshot of the fashion world in '90s London

—— Vogue UK

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