Packard criticized advertisers' unfettered use of private information to create marketing schemes.

He compared a recent Great Society initiative by then-president Lyndon B. Johnson, the National Data Bank, to the use of information by advertisers and argued for increased data privacy measures to ensure that information did not find its way into the wrong hands.

Ervin criticized Johnson's invasive domestic agenda and saw the unfiltered database of consumers' information as a sign of presidential abuse of power.

[2] The technologies of concern at the time of publication were such things as hidden microphones, concealed cameras, and the polygraph lie detector.

[3] One reviewer summarized the book by saying that it "is concerned with all the peeping tomfoolery which is going on today and the various ways in which we are exposed and thereby victimized.