It’s a scenario familiar to many of us: We go online and search for a product we’re interested in purchasing. Moments later, we click on our favorite news site, only to be bombarded with ads, including some for the product we were just viewing. So how did this happen? And what else might we unwittingly be sharing about our behavior, activities and tastes?
Investigative reporter Julia Angwin explores this growing issue in her book, “Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance.” It’s now out in paperback. “Dragnet Nation” explores the seemingly endless array of ways in which data brokers are tracking our every move. Those brokers may include government agencies, cell phone providers, retailers and, yes, criminals.
Julia Angwin is an investigative journalist at the independent news organization Pro Publica. From 2000 to 2013, she was a reporter at The Wall Street Journal, where she led a privacy investigative team that was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize. She also was on a team of reporters at The Wall Street Journal that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Explanatory Reporting in 2003 for coverage of corporate corruption.
