This is one respect in which the surveillance capitalists are not unprecedented. Adam Winkler, a historian of corporate rights, reminds us, “Throughout American history the nation’s most powerful corporations have persistently mobilized to use the Constitution to fight off unwanted government regulations.” Although today’s mobilizations are not original, Winkler’s careful account demonstrates the effects of past mobilizations on the distribution of power and wealth in US society and the strength of democratic values and principles in each era.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 353