Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist for Pando Daily, a San Francisco-based news magazine focused on covering the politics and power of big tech. He has been published in Wired Magazine, The Nation, Slate, Penthouse, The New York Observer, Playboy, Not Safe For Work Corp, Alternet, and many others. He has also appeared on network television, including MSNBC, and has had his work profiled by the New York Observer, Vanity Fair, and The Verge, among others.
"A real publicservice."-San Francisco Review of Books
"This polemical history argues that the U.S. military's role inthe development of the Internet indelibly shaped the system intoa powerful tool of government surveillance. ... amid increasing dismay abouttechnology's influence on contemporary life, such forceful questioning issalutary."-New Yorker
"Provocative history of the internet-equipped security state,implicating key players in the digital economy in the game of espionage....Levine, a tech-savvy investigative journalist, documents an army of them in hiswide-ranging look at the way governments and companies alike spy on ordinarycitizens."-Kirkus
"This engrossinginvestigation will find a large audience among those interested in the uses andabuses of technology."-Library Journal
"Yasha Levine's bold and sweeping history of the Internet-from itsshadowy inception as a military contrivance for counterinsurgency and domesticsurveillance, to its current incarnation as a commercialized tool for everydaycommunication that turns everyone's life into an open book-tells a grippingstory of our algorithmic way of life in the making. Defying common Internettropes that present a battle between valiant and independent rebels versusomnipresent state and corporate powers, no one comes out of this book lookingclean. Whatever your thoughts about our digitized world, this book willchallenge them."-Stuart Ewen, Distinguished Professor of History, Sociology and Media Studies at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center
"The Internet will never be the same after you read Surveillance Valley.Yasha Levine has done a masterful job of research and reporting about themilitary origins of the 'world wide web' and how its essential nature has notchanged in the years since its creation during the Cold War. I especiallyapplaud his courage in unraveling the connections between the so-called 'deepstate' and its economic allies in Silicon Valley with the big guns of the 'privacy' movement, who have scoffed at virtually every attempt at making theiroperations transparent to the public."-Tim Shorrock, author of Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing
"In this fast-paced, myth busting expose, Yasha Levinedocuments how a collection of spooks, cybernetic fanatics, and libertarian oligarchs haveexploited the internet to promote regime change abroad and establish atotalistic spying network at home. Surveillance Valley isan unprecedented journalistic achievement, revealing the untold history of theanti-democratic regime that rules our lives from behind a glossy LED screen."-Max Blumenthal, author of Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel, senior editor of AlterNet's Grayzone Project
"An important historylesson."-TANK
"SurveillanceValley is a troubling book, but it is an important book. Itsmashes comforting myths."-Boundary 2