What began as a journalistic quest to investigate the literal terms and conditions we must accept prior to installing software, signing up for free accounts like Google & Facebook, and buying anything over the internet evolved into an investigate documentary about the erosion of privacy, and the discrete cooperative relationship between so-called benevolent corporations and secretive government agencies.

Beginning with the emergence of the ubiquitous user agreements with their mandatory Accept / Decline buttons – a concept originally developed by a pizza company for its online delivery service – director / editor Cullen Hoback uses archival footage, pop culture media, and a plethora of interviews to trace the increasingly disturbing methods whereby corporations have become the legal conveyance through which governments can acquire sensitive data without going through a lengthy legal process. Hoback’s film isn’t a wake-up call – the mechanisms and agreements are too entrenched at this stage to scale back – but a snapshot of how we’ve lost any sense of privacy for the benefit of preventing potential violence in a post-9/11 era, and consciously resigned ourselves to an invasive existence.

© 2013 Mark R. Hasan