From the first lines of the preface of the subcommittee's 1974 report, authored by Senator Ervin, it should be evident to any twenty-first-century captive of surveillance capitalism that US society has undergone a social discontinuity more profound than the mere passage of decades suggests. It is worth reading Ervin's own words, to grasp the passion with which he located the subcommittee's work at the heart of the Enlightenment project, pledging to defend the liberal ideals of freedom and dignity: When the founding fathers established our constitutional system of government, they based it on their fundamental belief in the sanctity of the individual...

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 1014