## Highlights - The successors to the e-commerce companies that had failed because they couldn’t find anything we were interested in buying now had a new product to sell. That new product was Us. ([Location 102](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VWQCK4K&location=102)) - The system of near-universal surveillance had been set up not just without our consent, but in a way that deliberately hid every aspect of its programs from our knowledge. ([Location 113](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VWQCK4K&location=113)) - The freedom of a country can only be measured by its respect for the rights of its citizens, and it’s my conviction that these rights are in fact limitations of state power that define exactly where and when a government may not infringe into that domain of personal or individual freedoms that during the American Revolution was called “liberty” and during the Internet Revolution is called “privacy.” ([Location 126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VWQCK4K&location=126)) ## New highlights added December 28, 2024 at 6:36 PM - That, ultimately, is the critical flaw or design defect intentionally integrated into every system, in both politics and computing: the people who create the rules have no incentive to act against themselves. What convinced me that school, at least, was an illegitimate system was that it wouldn’t recognize any legitimate dissent. I could plead my case until I lost my voice, or I could just accept the fact that I’d never had a voice to begin with. ([Location 720](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VWQCK4K&location=720)) ## New highlights added February 14, 2025 at 10:34 AM - Humans are hardwired to recognize patterns. All the choices we make are informed by a cache of assumptions, both empirical and logical, unconsciously derived and consciously developed. We use these assumptions to assess the potential consequences of each choice, and we describe the ability to do all of this, quickly and accurately, as intelligence. But even the smartest among us rely on assumptions that we’ve never put to the test—and because we do, the choices we make are often flawed. Anyone who knows better, or thinks more quickly and more accurately than we do, can take advantage of those flaws to create consequences that we never expected. It’s this egalitarian nature of hacking—which doesn’t care who you are, just how you reason—that makes it such a reliable method of dealing with the type of authority figures so convinced of their system’s righteousness that it never occurred to them to test it. ([Location 735](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VWQCK4K&location=735)) - In the absolute worst case, I’d sputter, and my classmates would think I was stupid. Let them. You should always let people underestimate you. Because when people misappraise your intelligence and abilities, they’re merely pointing out their own vulnerabilities—the gaping holes in their judgment that need to stay open if you want to cartwheel through later on a flaming horse, correcting the record with your sword of justice. ([Location 853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07VWQCK4K&location=853))