The Rise of the Computer State: The Threat to Our Freedoms, Our Ethics and our Democratic Process - Softcover

"[Burnham] is a very good reporter, and in The Rise of the Computer State, he has applied his skills to produce a perceptive examination of the machine that is, more than any other, changing the nature of the world in which we live, moving us with breathtaking speed in unpredictable and not always beneficial directions." -The Washington Post (Sunday, June 26, 1983) "We have, of course, heard about the cultural and political dangers of such electronic surveillance before, but surely no previous report to the general reader has been so comprehensive as Mr. Burnham's." -The New York Times (June 4, 1983)

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.