Ben Waber reviewed The Known Citizen by Sarah E. Igo
A Data-Free, Libertarian Screed with a Bit of History
2 stars
The parts of this book that illuminate past important events in US privacy history are great. Unfortunately, those parts are few and far between. The vast majority of this book is a bizarre libertarian screed, railing against social security, any form of information sharing, and government programs more broadly. Tradeoffs between individual data sharing and social goals? Not examined. Data beyond a few anecdotes to back up the vast majority of claims made in the book? Nope. This and Igo's almost hilarious ignorance of the historical reality of issues such as racism and sexism (I'm pretty sure employers didn't need data from the social security administration to check if their employees were Black...) makes the book barely tolerable. I don't even want to get into the weird digressions on social science research (Igo apparently previously wrote a book on this topic and must have felt compelled to jam in a …
The parts of this book that illuminate past important events in US privacy history are great. Unfortunately, those parts are few and far between. The vast majority of this book is a bizarre libertarian screed, railing against social security, any form of information sharing, and government programs more broadly. Tradeoffs between individual data sharing and social goals? Not examined. Data beyond a few anecdotes to back up the vast majority of claims made in the book? Nope. This and Igo's almost hilarious ignorance of the historical reality of issues such as racism and sexism (I'm pretty sure employers didn't need data from the social security administration to check if their employees were Black...) makes the book barely tolerable. I don't even want to get into the weird digressions on social science research (Igo apparently previously wrote a book on this topic and must have felt compelled to jam in a chapter on this for no reason). But hey, if you want a throwback to the 90s when this kind of naive libertarianism was normal and want to learn a little about US privacy history, this book will check the box
