“This book is about privacy and why we should really, really take privacy and data rights seriously. People say, ‘I'm not doing anything dodgy so I don't have to worry about it.' That's not the issue. The issue is that actually if you need to get a job or a loan or any number of things, these companies have the power to influence that, to influence your future. It's undermining our freedom, political structures and how we make decisions.”
Tech's hard power
When data is snatched away from us even when we try to resist, that's tech's hard power. Like Google storing location data even when you've told it not to: an Associated Press investigation in 2018 found that Google was storing location data even when people had turned off Location History. Google's support page on that setting stated: “You can turn off Location History at any time. With Location History off, the places you go are no longer stored.”
