What kind of data is your cell phone company collecting? Malte Spitz wasn't too worried when he asked his operator in Germany to share information stored about him. Multiple unanswered requests and a lawsuit later, Spitz received 35,830 lines of code -- a detailed, nearly minute-by-minute account of half a year of his life.

"Why would anyone be watching me? I'm nobody." If this is your contribution to conversations about mass surveillance, tech journalist Marta Peirano would like a word with you. Wielding cautionary tales about contemporary data collection that make the Stasi seem quaint, Peirano explains how the data that our phones and algorithms automatically co...