Surveillance valley - Yasha Levine

9781610398022

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Title
Surveillance valley - the secret military history of the Internet
Author
Yasha Levine
format
Hardback
Publisher
PublicAffairs
Language
English
UK Publication Date
20180206

The internet is the most effective weapon the government has ever built.

In this fascinating book, investigative reporter Yasha Levine uncovers the secret origins of the internet, tracing it back to a Pentagon counterinsurgency surveillance project.

A visionary intelligence officer, William Godel, realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy, but using new information technology to understand their motives and anticipate their movements. This idea--using computers to spy on people and groups perceived as a threat, both at home and abroad--drove ARPA to develop the internet in the 1960s, and continues to be at the heart of the modern internet we all know and use today. As Levine shows, surveillance wasn't something that suddenly appeared on the internet; it was woven into the fabric of the technology.

But this isn't just a story about the NSA or other domestic programs run by the government. As the book spins forward in time, Levine examines the private surveillance business that powers tech-industry giants like Google, Facebook, and Amazon, revealing how these companies spy on their users for profit, all while doing double duty as military and intelligence contractors. Levine shows that the military and Silicon Valley are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex that permeates everything connected to the internet, even coopting and weaponizing the antigovernment privacy movement that sprang up in the wake of Edward Snowden.

With deep research, skilled storytelling, and provocative arguments, Surveillance Valley will change the way you think about the news--and the device on which you read it.

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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

Type
BOOK
Keyword Index
Electronic surveillance - United States.|Internet - History.|Civil-military relations - United States.|Military research - United States - History.|ARPANET (Computer network) - History.|Internet - Political aspects.
Country of Publication
New York (State)
Number of Pages
vii, 371

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