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Mindf*ck
- Inside Cambridge Analytica’s Plot to Break the World
- Narrated by: Graham Halstead
- Length: 11 hrs and 49 mins
- Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Politics & Government
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When Brittany Kaiser joined Cambridge Analytica - the UK-based political consulting firm funded by conservative billionaire and Donald Trump patron Robert Mercer - she was an idealistic young professional working on her fourth degree in human rights law and international relations. A veteran of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Kaiser’s goal was to utilise data for humanitarian purposes, most notably to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. But her experience inside Cambridge Analytica opened her eyes to the tremendous risks that this unregulated industry poses to democracy.
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#targeted by #brittanyKaiser
- By BenGee333 on 22-03-20
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Barton Gellman’s informant called himself ‘Verax’ - the truth-teller. It was only later that Verax unmasked himself as Edward Snowden. But Gellman’s primary role in bringing Snowden’s revelations to light, for which he shared the Pulitzer prize, is only the beginning of this gripping real-life spy story. Snowden unlocked the door: here Gellman describes what he found on the other side over the course of a years-long journey of investigation.
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smoke and mirrors more like🤔
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Cult of the Dead Cow is the tale of the oldest, most respected, and most famous American hacking group of all time. Though until now it has remained mostly anonymous, its members invented the concept of hacktivism. Today, the group and its followers are battling electoral misinformation, making personal data safer, and battling to keep technology a force for good instead of for surveillance and oppression. Cult of the Dead Cow shows how governments, corporations, and criminals came to hold immense power over individuals and how we can fight back against them.
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Fascinating History of Hacking
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Sandworm
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From Wired senior writer Andy Greenberg comes the true story of the most devastating cyberattack in history and the desperate hunt to identify and track the elite Russian agents behind it. In 2014, the world witnessed the start of a mysterious series of cyberattacks. Targeting American utility companies, NATO, and electric grids in Eastern Europe, the strikes grew ever more brazen.
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Everyone should listen to this. It's exceptional.
- By IanRobinson on 07-12-19
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Don't Be Evil
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An award-winning Financial Times columnist exposes the threat that Big Tech poses to our democracies, our economies and ourselves. Today Google and Facebook receive 90 percent of the world's news ad spending. Amazon takes half of all ecommerce in the US. Google and Apple operating systems run on all but 1 percent of cell phones globally. And 80 percent of corporate wealth is now held by 10 percent of companies - not the GEs and Toyotas of this world but the digital titans. How did we get here? How did the tech industry get to dominate our world so completely?
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its fine
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Permanent Record
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Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, 29-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email.
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Superbly written, totally gripping.
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When Brittany Kaiser joined Cambridge Analytica - the UK-based political consulting firm funded by conservative billionaire and Donald Trump patron Robert Mercer - she was an idealistic young professional working on her fourth degree in human rights law and international relations. A veteran of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign, Kaiser’s goal was to utilise data for humanitarian purposes, most notably to prevent genocide and human rights abuses. But her experience inside Cambridge Analytica opened her eyes to the tremendous risks that this unregulated industry poses to democracy.
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#targeted by #brittanyKaiser
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Barton Gellman’s informant called himself ‘Verax’ - the truth-teller. It was only later that Verax unmasked himself as Edward Snowden. But Gellman’s primary role in bringing Snowden’s revelations to light, for which he shared the Pulitzer prize, is only the beginning of this gripping real-life spy story. Snowden unlocked the door: here Gellman describes what he found on the other side over the course of a years-long journey of investigation.
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smoke and mirrors more like🤔
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An award-winning Financial Times columnist exposes the threat that Big Tech poses to our democracies, our economies and ourselves. Today Google and Facebook receive 90 percent of the world's news ad spending. Amazon takes half of all ecommerce in the US. Google and Apple operating systems run on all but 1 percent of cell phones globally. And 80 percent of corporate wealth is now held by 10 percent of companies - not the GEs and Toyotas of this world but the digital titans. How did we get here? How did the tech industry get to dominate our world so completely?
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its fine
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Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, 29-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email.
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Superbly written, totally gripping.
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Dina is so gifted and so brave!
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Non fiction that reads like a thriller!
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CNN’s chief national security correspondent reveals the invisible fronts of 21st-century warfare and identifies the ongoing battles being waged - often without the public’s full knowledge - from disinformation campaigns to advanced satellite weaponry.
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Excellent
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Thomas Rid, a renowned expert on technology and national security, was one of the first to sound the alarm. Even before the 2016 election, he warned that Russian military intelligence was 'carefully planning and timing a high-stakes political campaign' to disrupt the democratic process. But as crafty as such so-called active measures have become, they are not new. In this astonishing journey through a century of secret psychological war, Rid reveals for the first time some of history's most significant operations - many of them nearly beyond belief.
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Great book but audio problems
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Great story but iffy presentation at times.
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From the number one New York Times best-selling author and award-winning journalist comes Shadow State, a timely and shocking analysis which connects Putin, Trump, and Brexit with the dark web. Based on years of investigations, Luke Harding reveals how Russian spies helped to sway the 2016 US presidential elections in favour of Trump and backed the campaign which resulted in Brexit, and how they lied, deceived, and murdered to do so.
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Fascinating, Illuminating and worrying
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In The Death of Truth, a short and powerful new polemic, Oborne shows how Boris Johnson lied again and again in order to secure victory so he could force through Brexit in the face of parliamentary opposition. Johnson and his ministers then lied repeatedly to win the general election in December 2019. The government’s woeful response to the coronavirus pandemic has generated another wave of falsehoods, misrepresentations and fabrications.
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A stark reminder Bojo is a liar and cheat
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- Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon
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Fascinating subject and an amazing story
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The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
- The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power
- By: Shoshana Zuboff
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
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- Unabridged
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The Age of Surveillance Capitalism is neither a hand-wringing narrative of danger and decline nor a digital fairy tale. Rather, it offers a deeply reasoned and evocative examination of the contests over the next chapter of capitalism that will decide the meaning of information civilization in the 21st century. The stark issue at hand is whether we will be the masters of information and machines or its slaves.
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Had so badly wanted to like it
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The Life-Changing Magic of Numbers
- How Maths Can Make Life Better
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- Narrated by: Bobby Seagull
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- Unabridged
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Once you know how to see them, numbers are all around us - buried in the dimensions of buildings and encoding the data on our favourite gadgets. They’re a beautiful system of patterns and codes but also an essential tool that can guide our daily decisions, change our behaviour and even predict the future - if we can just learn how to use them right.
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Kleptopia: How Dirty Money Is Conquering the World
- By: Tom Burgis
- Narrated by: Tom Burgis
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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They are everywhere, the thieves and their people. Masters of secrecy. Until now we have detected their presence only by what they leave behind. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London. They have amassed more money than most countries. But what they are really stealing is power.
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Genuinely Fascinating
- By Ellie on 08-02-21
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The Art of Invisibility
- The World's Most Famous Hacker Teaches You How to Be Safe in the Age of Big Brother and Big Data
- By: Kevin Mitnick
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 9 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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Like it or not, your every move is being watched and analyzed. Consumers' identities are being stolen, and a person's every step is being tracked and stored. What once might have been dismissed as paranoia is now a hard truth, and privacy is a luxury few can afford or understand. In this explosive yet practical book, Kevin Mitnick illustrates what is happening without your knowledge - and he teaches you "the art of invisibility".
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Bad book
- By Dionysis Zindros on 07-12-19
Summary
From whistle-blower Christopher Wylie, the definitive story of the Brexit coup, the making of Bannon's America and an ongoing crime against democracy.
What if you could peer into the minds of an entire population? What if you could target the weakest with rumours that only they saw?
In 2016, an obscure British military contractor turned the world upside down. Funded by a billionaire on a crusade to start his own far-right insurgency, Cambridge Analytica combined psychological research with private Facebook data to make an invisible weapon with the power to change what voters perceived as real.
The firm was created to launch the then unknown Steve Bannon's ideological assault on America. But as it honed its dark arts in elections from Trinidad to Nigeria, 24-year-old research director Christopher Wylie began to see what he and his colleagues were unleashing.
He had heard the disturbing visions of the investors. He saw what CEO Alexander Nix did behind closed doors. When Britain shocked the world by voting to leave the EU, Wylie realised it was time to expose his old associates. The political crime of the century had just taken place - the weapon had been tested - and nobody knew.
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What listeners say about Mindf*ck
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Ben
- 30-10-20
I thought this was going to be like Ed Snowden’s book...
It really comes across as the pinnacle of woke or cancel culture. Essentially he got Cambridge Analytica cancelled.
Being gay shouldn’t have anything to do with this story, which has sooo much potential. Yet it does, at every opportunity.
There’s no balance, it’s as if he was out to personally bring down right wing politicians, constantly making snide remarks. We all know left wing politicians would never use online marketing campaigns, right?
Unless you’re really on his page....skip this one.
2 people found this helpful
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- Jack Holt
- 17-04-20
Extremely irritating
This is honestly an interesting read, but made frustrating by an insufferable author. He describes himself as a marmite person, which, based on some of the other reviews, must be true, because I couldn't stand him.
The first half contains interesting information, and the author speaks with what seems like frank honesty about some of his own truly awful actions. He claims to have, and to have had, left wing and progressive values, while simultaneously working tirelessly against those values for personal profit and with the misguided notion that he is some kind of data prodigy. He portrays himself as the brains behind Cambridge Analytica, but seems to take very little responsibility for what he did. He then goes on to cast himself as the hero of his own story, and also some kind of victim, somehow. The interesting parts of the book are speckled with irritating personal observations, and he tells us over and over about how he's gay and dyes his hair, as though those irrelevant features somehow redeem his character.
What really bumped this down from a 4 star to a 3 is the end of the book, which is made up of the authors recommendations for changing society, with him throwing out wisdom as if he's some kind of great thinker who we should all listen to. I do actually agree with a lot of what he says, although it has all been said before, but it really left a sour taste in my mouth to hear someone describe years of pure hypocrisy and selfishness, frame it as though he had thought he was working towards something good, and then go on to preach about ethics as if a short career in being completely unethical qualifies him to do that.
I can't really rate the narrator, but I think his delivery exacerbated my annoyance with the author. Perhaps if the author had read it himself he wouldn't have come off quite so smug.
2 people found this helpful
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- Derrick Tapscott
- 30-06-20
Gripping Story of the Truth
Fascinating inside story of the way major elections are fought in cyber space
The story travels the world of the shadows where a 2% swing in an election wins all but at what cost with links to Russia, a Billionaire, the Alt Right, Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. The tale is daring and and you feel for his personal safety at times.
The epilogue discusses the need for Internet Utility standards - similar to building standards - for Personal Data. "When you walk through a door you do no need to sign a form telling you that the building may fall on you. A very well made point.
1 person found this helpful
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- Edgar Kindling
- 22-06-20
whistleblowers are the true heroes!
a good story,well narrated about the miserable ways our politics work and how easy people can be manipulated.
1 person found this helpful
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- Snow Angel
- 21-06-20
Thank you
I thought I had gone mad or was living in a parallel universe, never understanding how we committed economic suicide. Now I understand, this was the intention of a powerful man to create chaos in a system that was working too well for his purposes and in order for his objectives to be achieved Europe needed to fail and if he could damage America using the same tools, so much the better. Thank you Christopher for your courage and determination to reveal how like stupid sheep we follow fake news rather than seeking the truth.
1 person found this helpful
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- KRB
- 26-02-20
Very very important. I was surprised!
I saw the great hack documentary, and read Brittany kaiser's book first. She did not place Christopher wylie in good light. So I had my doubts about this book. Even hesitated to buy it. It started out very generic, but soon became very detailed and intriguing. I was highly surprised! Turned out to be very very good! I highly recommend this. Its so important and if we don't pay attention, we are all going to suffer as nations and societies. Unless you are very rich and therefore above petty concerns like digital and human rights. Please read. Seriously.
1 person found this helpful
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- Ryszard Pilorz
- 16-01-21
Eyes opening story.
it's scary and sad that so many people are not aware how the tech companies can manipulate them. Everybody should read this book...
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- An C.
- 28-12-20
Must read for people who care about their data
Although a lot of information shared in the book can also be found in the public domain, this book gives a further depth and colour to the frauds that are being committed when it comes to elections and polls. It also offers insight into the lack of action taken by those elected in government.
One of the most poignant statements is that when fraud is detected in sports you are disqualified and stripped from medals, in politics a person proven to be fraudulent can still become a prime minister or party leader.
I would definitely love to see the software engineering profession to be held as accountable as civil engineers and other regulated professions
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- RJD
- 27-11-20
Great book, very eye opening
Great book. Surprisingly easy to pick up where you left off, I found myself thinking about what he was going to say next when I wasn't able to listen. Highly reccomend this book and I sent it to all my friends :)
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- hershpat
- 24-11-20
what a great book
this is a must read if you want to find out how we are being influenced by social media companies and how they are a solving themselves of responsibility.
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- Rogan King
- 10-03-20
Great book spoiled by personal vendetta
Fantastic story. Should not have been so focused on authors personal relationships with the characters and more focused on the actual events.
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- Mr. Smith
- 29-11-19
Brilliant and Educational.
loved it. not only did the author detail what happened and how it happened, but the level of detail is sufficient for a practioner of software to reproduce the systems of SCL and their successes. the Trinidad project however is appaling.