The Silicon Jungle : A Novel of Deception, Power, and Internet Intrigue

What happens when a naive intern is granted unfettered access to people's most private thoughts and actions? Stephen Thorpe lands a coveted internship at Ubatoo, an Internet empire that provides its users with popular online services, from a search engine and e-mail, to social networking. When Stephen’s boss asks him to work on a project with the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, Stephen innocently obliges, believing he is mining Ubatoo’s vast databases to protect people unfairly targeted in the name of national security. But nothing is as it seems. Suspicious individuals surface, doing all they can to access Ubatoo’s wealth of confidential information. This need not require technical wizardry—simply knowing how to manipulate a well-intentioned intern may be enough. __The Silicon Jungle__ is a cautionary fictional tale of data mining’s promise and peril. Baluja raises ethical questions about contemporary technological innovations, and how minute details can be routinely pieced together into rich profiles that reveal our habits, goals, and secret desires—all ready to be exploited. A suspenseful story about the dangers of unknowingly revealing our most intimate thoughts and actions online What happens when a naive intern is granted unfettered access to people's most private thoughts and actions? Stephen Thorpe lands a coveted internship at Ubatoo, an Internet empire that provides its users with popular online services, from a search engine and e-mail, to social networking. When Stephen's boss asks him to work on a project with the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, Stephen innocently obliges, believing he is mining Ubatoo's vast databases to protect people unfairly targeted in the name of national security. But nothing is as it seems. Suspicious individuals surface, doing all they can to access Ubatoo's wealth of confidential information. This need not require technical wizardry—simply knowing how to manipulate a well-intentioned intern may be enough. The Silicon Jungle is a cautionary fictional tale of data mining's promise and peril. Baluja raises ethical questions about contemporary technological innovations, and how minute details can be routinely pieced together into rich profiles that reveal our habits, goals, and secret desires—all ready to be exploited. Contents Preface Endings Anklets Anthropologists in the Midst Mollycoddle Touchpoints Checking In Working 9 to 4 Predicting the Future and 38 Needles Contact Two Geeks in a Pod An Understatement Euphoria and Diet Pills To Better Days Marathon The Life and Soul of an Intern Candid Cameras Episodes Liberal Food and Even More Liberal Activism Subjects Newsworthy Patience Hypergrowth Little Pink Houses Truth, Lies, and Algorithms Negotiations and Herding Cats The Jenny Discovery I Dream of Jenny July A Five-Step Program Over-Deliver A Life Changed in Four Phone Calls Giving Thanks A Drive through the Country Control A Tale of Two Tenures Prelude to Pie The Yuri Effect Apple Pie Thoughts Like Butterflies Core-Relations Collide Control, Revisited Fables of the Deconstruction Control, Foregone Foundations One Way Sebastin’s Friends A Tinker by Any Other Name When It Rains I Am a Heartbeat What I Did This Summer A Permanent Position For Adam Faith Counting by Two Disconnect Sahim Epilogue: Beginnings Acknowledgments Know More The Privacy Policy of a few organizations, in their own words References What happens when a naive intern is granted unfettered access to people's most private thoughts and actions? Young Stephen Thorpe lands a coveted internship at Ubatoo, an Internet empire that provides its users with popular online services, from a search engine and shopping to e-mail and social networking. When Stephen's boss asks him to work on a project with the American Coalition for Civil Liberties, Stephen innocently obliges, believing he is mining Ubatoo's vast databases to protect the ever-growing number of people unfairly targeted in the name of national security. But nothing is as it