8/10
Important and frightening
4 August 2013
This is an important and frightening film, about how Google, Amzaon, Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkdin - and IMDb? - harvest our personal information and onsell it to the highest bidder, or to the government. How we don't read that wodge of text in capitals comprising "Terms and conditions" before we click "Accept" - nobody could, it would take a month per year for everything we sign. But even when that text is brief and written in plain English, it gives those corporations unprecedented power over our personal information - including the right to change the rules without telling us, to increase their power without limit and without asking again, and to keep it forever, even after we have "deleted" it.

The film is entertaining, including how a seven year old boy was interrogated about something he had texted; how an Irishman on holiday in the US never got into the country but spent days in confinement instead, because he had used "destroy America" as a figure of speech in a tweet; how people planning a zombie parade during the Royal Wedding were arrested based on the social media planning; and how a TV crime writer was raided based on his Google searches.

I saw this a few days after "We Steal Secrets: the story of Wikileaks". It is the better film, letting the facts speak for themselves more.

And now I'm getting paranoid about what will happen to me for writing this....
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