Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas, everyone.

As the season of gift-giving approaches, we are sure to be bombarded with supersized savings on all manner of interconnected devices and toys. If you give or receive one of these fabulous devices, are you also prepared to defend yourself and your family from the spiderweb created by these things that are watching and learning about you?

I cannot recommend self-smarting highly enough, and to that end, I’d like you to check out a compilation of articles and essays by some of the brightest minds in the industry. This collection was assembled by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for the literary journal Timothy McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern.

Here’s what the group over at Purism has to say about it:

Compiled by the team at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) for McSweeney’s, this collection features writing by luminaries like Cory Doctorow, Gabriella Coleman, Edward Snowden, Bruce Schneier, and many more. Among the gems within is a conversation between artist Trevor Paglen and journalist Julia Angwin, with Paglen having this to say about the intersection of freedom and privacy:

“I think I had the sense of growing up within structures that didn’t work for me and feeling like there was a deep injustice around that. Feeling like the world was set up to move you down certain paths and to enforce certain behaviors and norms [didn’t] work for me, and realizing that the value of this word formerly known as privacy, otherwise known as liberty, plays not only at the scale of the individual but also as a kind of public resource that allows for the possibility of, on one hand, experimentation, but then, on the other hand, things like civil liberties and self-representation.”

I’ve ordered a copy in print form and think everyone should do the same, but the folks over at EFF have done us yet another great service and have offered it to us all at no charge in electronic format. Just click here for your very own copy!

Merry Christmas, everyone. Enjoy the holiday season.