Book Review: RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society

Reviewed by David Cole

RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society by Ronald J. Deibert, House of Anansi Press, 2020, ISBN: 978-1487008086

In this modern age of surveillance capitalism, who is out there to defend us?  Something that seems so innocuous as signing up for a Facebook page to keep in touch with friends and family can lead to your personal information being collected and sold.  This includes your pictures and contact information, as well as that of your friends and family.  Who is using this information and why?  Is there anything we can do to stop this?  All of this and more is discussed in RESET: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society by Ronald J. Deibert.

In 2020, Ronald Deibert was selected to deliver the prestigious CBC Massey Lecture series.  This series is an annual event where lectures are given by distinguished writers and scholars who explore contemporary ideas and issues that affect Canada and the world at large.  RESET was published after the fact to accompany the lectures delivered by Mr. Deibert.

Ronald Deibert is a professor of political science as well as director of The Citizen Lab (formed in 2001) at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.  The Citizen Lab focuses on policy and legal aspects regarding the intersection of human rights and information technologies.  The Lab undertakes this work through research and field work to study the mostly unregulated surveillance industry, dark PR firms, and other such nefarious groups.

RESET discusses the issues around our personal information and how it is collected and used by others for their own personal or political gains.  Through a series of five chapters, the reader is led along a discussion of the economic underbelly of social media, what's being done with the information collected and why it's not so easy for us to walk away from social media itself.  The final chapter in the book discusses what can be done to combat these bad actors through regulations and policies, with the key idea being that of restraint.

Ronald Deibert writes with a smooth, concise style that draws the reader along.  A copious notes section at the end will help the more curious reader to follow-up on any points of interest they discovered along the way.  With a style that is easy to read and not too heavy on the technical side, this book makes an interesting read for anyone who is interested in the "dark" side of social media, not just us 3l173 h4ck3r5.