The Rise of the Computer State is a comprehensive examination of the ways that computers and massive databases are enabling the nation's corporations and law enforcement agencies to steadily erode our privacy and manipulate and control the American people. This book was written in 1983 as a warning. Today it is a history. Most of its grim scenarios are now part of everyday life. The remedy proposed here, greater public oversight of industry and government, has not occurred, but a better one has not yet been found. While many individuals have willingly surrendered much of their privacy and all of us have lost some of it, the right to keep what remains is still worth protecting.
"Using the investigative skills that have won him many awards as a reporter for U.P.I, Newsweek, CBS and The New York Times . . . Mr. Burnham skillfully penetrates the Dungeons and Dragons-like maze of credit, insurance, and personnel practices, intelligence operations, market research and political polling."
The New York Times Book Review (Aug 21, 1983)
"This book is indispensable to anyone who wonders how we might live in the 21st century. It is filled with examples foretelling the quiet disintegration of personal freedom through small choices that yield to thousands of strangers what was once personal."
