When Gadgets Betray Us: The Dark Side of Our Infatuation with New Technologies

PCWorld's Vamosi offers a solid analysis of just how deeply technology can be used to gather personal information about us without our awareness, a scenario more alarming than we can imagine. His thoroughly researched look at the products being used in many unintended ways, and unintentionally, by their owners is exhaustively detailed: how auto antitheft technology can be used to help car thieves; how mobile phone conversations can be intercepted without our knowledge; how "black box" data recording technology in automobiles as well as "in our digital cameras, our photocopiers, and even those convenient toll-booth bypass gadgets on the freeway" can be used by companies to surreptitiously gather personal information. Vamosi's goal is to shock, but he also argues that, in certain cases, such as data-mining health information, "electronic data can sometimes be better at telling us what is happening in the world around us than our own senses." But overall, he convincingly shows how and why we need to "scrutinize the gadgets we now take for granted, and view with suspicion new gadgets that come our way." (Apr.)