No Escaping Dragnet Nation

This week, as the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein publicly accused the CIA of spying on her committee’s computers, Bill talks with investigative reporter Julia Angwin, author of Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance. The book chronicles the indiscriminate tracking of our everyday lives — where government and business are stockpiling data about us at an unprecedented pace. Reporters are a prime target for Internet snooping, says Angwin, “Journalists are the canary in the coal mine. We’re the first ones to seriously feel the impact of total surveillance, which means we can’t protect our sources. But what happens next? What happens next is we’re not good watch dogs for democracy. And that’s a very worrisome situation.” Angwin and Moyers also discuss our exposure to fraud from online data mining; why mass data collection is not making us safer in the face of terrorism and why European privacy regulations are stronger than those in the US. Julia Angwin covered the business and technology beat at The Wall Street Journal for 13 years and is a Pulitzer Prize winner now working for the independent news organization ProPublica.