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Our favorite resources for examining and understanding technology and the surveillance economy

Top Picks

Notable selections
The Privacy Project

Read The New York Times series examining the landscape of internet privacy and security.
Do Not Track Documentary

Experience a personalized interactive documentary series about privacy and the web economy.
Atlas of Surveillance

Explore a searchable database on police surveillance tech like facial recognition, drones, license plate readers, and other devices in your community.
The Great Hack

A 2019 documentary film about the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

Take Action

Things you can do right now
Install Tally!
Block trackers in a turn-based RPG where the internet is your map.
Use a web browser that doesn't track you

Install Tor Browser, Brave, Firefox, or Duck Duck Go

Know your rights

Review EFF’s COVID-19 and Digital Rights
Use an adblocker or tracker blocker

Install Ghostery, Disconnect, AdBlock, or Privacy Badger

Internet Health
Read the Mozilla Foundation report on privacy and security, openness, web literacy, decentralization, and digital inclusion.
Privacy Paradox
Join a 5-day plan to take back your digital identity... and maybe even your soul.
Go on a Data Detox

Everyday steps you can take to control your digital privacy, security, and wellbeing.

Watch

Films and shorts on privacy, security, and the attention economy
The Social Dilemma

Tech experts sound the alarm on the dangerous human impact of social networking.
Citizenfour
The 2014 documentary film that followed Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal.
The Lives of Others
A 2006 German drama film about the monitoring of East Berlin residents by agents of the Stasi, East Germany's secret police.
You’re Being Watched Right Now

2019 video about online tracking from The New York Times.

Read

Articles and books on surveillance capitalism
‘The Goal Is to Automate Us’: Welcome to the Age of Surveillance Capitalism

John Naughton, The Guardian, 2019
Wired Guide to Personal Data Collection

What you buy, where you go, even where you look is the oil that fuels the digital economy, Louise Matsakis, Wired 2019
Thermostats, Locks and Lights: Digital Tools of Domestic Abuse”

Nellie Bowles, The New York Times, 2018
People’s Deepest, Darkest Google Searches Are Being Used Against Them

Adrienne Lafrance, The Atlantic, 2015
Data Feminism

A new way of thinking about data science and data ethics.
Catherine D’Ignazio and Lauren Klein, The MIT Press, 2020
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power

Shoshana Zuboff, PublicAffairs, 2019
Close up at a Distance: Mapping, Technology and Politics

Laura Kurgan, Zone Books, 2013
SuperVision: An Introduction to the Surveillance Society

John Gilliom and Torin Monahan, University of Chicago Press, 2012

Cultural Works

Our favorite artistic and creative responses to surveillance
Gender Shades

Joy Buolamwini examines how well AI facial recognition services by IBM, Microsoft, and Face++ recognize genders.
Taxonomy of Humans According to Twitter

“The Infinite Campaign” exposes the bizarre rubrics Twitter uses to render its users legible.
How Not to Be Seen

How Not to Be Seen—a video by artist and critic Hito Steyerl—presents five lessons in invisibility.
Follower

Follower is a service created by Lauren McCarthy that provides a real life follower for day.
MegaPixels

An art and research publication investigating the ethics, origins, and individual privacy implications of face recognition datasets created "in the wild."
Facebook Demetricator

A web browser extension that hides all the metrics on Facebook—one of many subversive addons by Ben Grosser
I Know Where Your Cat Lives

Seven million public images of cats on a world map visualized using data users unknowingly uploaded in their metadata.
Dark Content (2015)

Content moderation is not carried out by sophisticated algorithems—it is the job of thousands of anonymous humans by Eva & Franco Mattes.

Who to follow

People and organizations to keep in your feed.
Surveillance & Society Journal

Open-access peer-reviewed journal of surveillance studies
Zeynep Tufekci

Writes and posts on the social implications of emerging technologies in the context of politics and corporate responsibility.
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society

Harvard research center focused on the study of cyberspace
Danah Boyd

Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research and the founder of Data & Society
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Work by the EFF addresses civil liberties in the digital world
Data & Society

Produces research on the social implications of data-centric technologies & automation.
Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity

Research addressing future information security challenges to amplify the upside of the digital revolution.
The Markup

Founded by Julia Angwin to produce data-centered journalism about technology and the people affected by it.
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