The reversal meant that although federal laws protected the privacy of a telephone call, the same information transmitted by internet immediately enters the ISPs’ surplus supply chains. This roust finally signaled the end of the myth of “free.” The Faustian pact that had been sold to the world’s internet users posed surveillance as the bitter price of free services such as Google’s Search and Facebook’s social network. This obfuscation is no longer tenable, as every consumer who pays his or her monthly telecom bill now also purchases the privilege of a remote and abstract but nevertheless rapacious digital strip search.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Cap…, loc. 537