One of the defining experiences of the present is the renewed sharpness of the eternal conflict between freedom and control: individuals and society are confronted with an unprecedented variety of freedom options. On the other hand, however, the technical possibilities escalate, and the widely felt necessity for increasing control—whether over one's own body, borders, or the entire world—grows. Starting from the concrete manifestations of this dialectic in recent debates about digital surveillance and self-tracking, big data, and bureaucracy, Markus Metz and Georg Seesslen question to what extent the glaring contradictions between freedom and control today are ultimately irreconcilable and where they are merely ideology.