1255 Chrome’s Cage: Inside Google’s Growing Surveillance Empire

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet

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EP. #1255 Chrome’s Cage: Inside Google’s Growing Surveillance Empire

Imagine your browser isn’t neutral but a listening post—feeding Big Tech a steady stream of your searches, keystrokes, and private moments. On Strange Planet, Katherine Albrecht—privacy researcher, bestselling author, and StartMail co-founder—walks us through how Chrome became a portal for surveillance, how AI and predictive analytics harvest our lives, and what it means when courts cement Google’s dominance. We interrogate the collision of technology, law, and power, ask whether citizens can still fight back, and map concrete steps to reclaim privacy. A wake-up call: convenience traded for control, and time is running out. Listen, learn, act—before your freedoms quietly vanish.

GUEST: Dr. Katherine Albrecht is a privacy researcher and consumer-rights advocate with degrees from Harvard and studies at the MIT Media Lab. She co-founded privacy-focused StartMail, co-authored the bestseller Spychips, has testified before lawmakers, and hosts a syndicated radio show—arguing for decades that RFID, browser dominance, and AI are tools of mass surveillance.

WEBSITES:

https://www.startmail.com

https://katherine-albrecht.com

BOOKS:

Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track Your Every Move with RFID

I Won't Take the Mark: A Bible Book and Contract for Children

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