Means of Control

Informationen zum Autor Byron Tau is an investigative and enterprise journalist who specializes in law, courts, and national security. As a reporter for the Associated Press, he won a 2026 Pulitzer Prize in international reporting for an astonishing global investigation into state-of-the-art tools of mass surveillance. Tau previously worked at The Wall Street Journal and Politico. A native of Holliston, Massachusetts, Tau has degrees from McGill University in Montreal and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. Klappentext You are being surveilled right now. This startling exposé ( The Economist ) by a Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist reveals how the U.S. government allied with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers to monitor us through the phones we carry and the devices in our home. A revealing . . . startling . . . timely . . . fascinating, sometimes terrifying examination of the decline of privacy in the digital age. Kirkus Reviews SHORTLISTED FOR THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS AWARD That evening, I was given a glimpse inside a hidden world. . . . An entirely new kind of surveillance programone designed to track everyone. For the past five yearsever since a chance encounter at a dinner partyjournalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring. Of course, our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this: Ever get the sense that an ad is following you around the internet? But the true potential of our phones, computers, homes, credit cards, and even the tires underneath our cars to reveal our habits and behavior would astonish most citizens. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of valuable data about every one of us. That data is for saleand the biggest customer is the U.S. government. In the years after 9/11, the U.S. government, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, built a foreign and domestic surveillance apparatus of breathtaking scopeone that can peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. This cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats has one directiveget everything you canand the result is a surreal world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries. And the public knows virtually nothing about it. Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is the defining story of our dangerous grand bargainubiquitous cheap technology, but at what price? Leseprobe Chapter 1 The Bad Guys Database Acxiom, Arkansas and Washington, D.C., 2001 It was a crisp New England morning when Acxiom consumer No. 254-04907-10006 cleared the security checkpoint at Boston's Logan Airport. Consumer No. 254-04907-10006 was a twenty-two-year-old Saudi national named Waleed al-Shehri. He was of slight stature and pale complexion and had been in the United States for only about five months on a tourist visa. But he had generated enough of a paper trail to be captured and indexed by Acxiom, which at the time was the world's largest consumer data repository, holding billions of records on consumers drawn from corporate America as well as public records like court filings, voter registrations, and property deeds. In his twenty weeks in America, al-Shehri had been busy. He had obtained two copies of the same Florida driver's license (A426-893-78-460-0) with slightly mismatching addresses, giving him a duplicate that he could pass to an associate. He opened a bank account at SunTrust Bank in Florida (account number 0385008119775 linked to Visa debit card 4011 8060 7079 6163) and bought, insured, an...

Klappentext

**You are being surveilled right now. This “startling exposé” (The Economist) by a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist reveals how the U.S. government allied with data brokers, tech companies, and advertisers to monitor us through the phones we carry and the devices in our home.

“A revealing . . . startling . . . timely . . . fascinating, sometimes terrifying examination of the decline of privacy in the digital age.”—Kirkus Reviews

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SABEW BEST IN BUSINESS AWARD

“That evening, I was given a glimpse inside a hidden world. . . . An entirely new kind of surveillance program—one designed to track everyone.”

For the past five years—ever since a chance encounter at a dinner party—journalist Byron Tau has been piecing together a secret story: how the whole of the internet and every digital device in the world became a mechanism of intelligence, surveillance, and monitoring.

Of course, our modern world is awash in surveillance. Most of us are dimly aware of this: Ever get the sense that an ad is “following” you around the internet? But the true potential of our phones, computers, homes, credit cards, and even the tires underneath our cars to reveal our habits and behavior would astonish most citizens. All of this surveillance has produced an extraordinary amount of valuable data about every one of us. That data is for sale—and the biggest customer is the U.S. government.

In the years after 9/11, the U.S. government, working with scores of anonymous companies, many scattered across bland Northern Virginia suburbs, built a foreign and domestic surveillance apparatus of breathtaking scope—one that can peer into the lives of nearly everyone on the planet. This cottage industry of data brokers and government bureaucrats has one directive—“get everything you can”—and the result is a surreal world in which defense contractors have marketing subsidiaries and marketing companies have defense contractor subsidiaries. And the public knows virtually nothing about it.

Sobering and revelatory, Means of Control is the defining story of our dangerous grand bargain—ubiquitous cheap technology, but at what price?

Leseprobe
**Chapter 1

The Bad Guys Database**

Acxiom, Arkansas and Washington, D.C., 2001

It was a crisp New England morning when Acxiom consumer No. 254-04907-10006 cleared the security checkpoint at Boston’s Logan Airport. Consumer No. 254-04907-10006 was a twenty-two-year-old Saudi national named Waleed al-Shehri. He was of slight stature and pale complexion and had been in the United States for only about five months on a tourist visa. But he had generated enough of a paper trail to be captured and indexed by Acxiom, which at the time was the world’s largest consumer data repository, holding billions of records on consumers drawn from corporate America as well as public records like court filings, voter registrations, and property deeds.

In his twenty weeks in America, al-Shehri had been busy. He had obtained two copies of the same Florida driver’s license (A426-893-78-460-0) with slightly mismatching addresses, giving him a duplicate that he could pass to an associate. He opened a bank account at SunTrust Bank in Florida (account number 0385008119775 linked to Visa debit card 4011 8060 7079 6163) and bought, insured, and then sold a 1993 Dodge Colt. He had bounced around motels and apartment complexes for weeks, generating even more records. The Bimini Motel and Apartments in Hollywood, Florida. Lago Mar Motel in Lake Worth. The Homing Inn in Boynton Beach. Lisa Motel and Apartment in Lake Worth. The DoubleTree in Lake Buena Vista. He’d availed himself of a number of services: a membership to the Body Perfect Fitness Center in Lake Worth and later the World Gym in Lantana. A Mail Boxes Etc. rental. He traveled extensively: to Freeport in the Bahamas, to Boston, to San Francisco, to Las Vegas. He made reservations at the Bahamas Princess Resort. Finally, he flew to the…