Yasha Levine

Despite the emergence of story after story about politically charged email hacks, corporate-security breaches, and secret drone strikes, we still think of the perpetrators as bad actors. Yet as Yasha Levine shows in this bracing book, the truth is simpler. The internet was built to be a weapon, and it's been getting ever more effective. Since ARPA began building it in the 1960s, internet technology has been synonymous with spying. Levine traces this history, starting with the visionary scientist William Godel, who realized that the key to winning the war in Vietnam was not outgunning the enemy but using new technology to understand and anticipate their movements. As the book spins forward in time, Levine shows that many of the tech-industry giants we think of as social networks, e-tailers, and search companies are doing double duty as military contractors and security outfits. Levine is unafraid to name names: Google, IBM, Facebook, and many others make appearances in the story; in fact, it's difficult to be a big player in Silicon Valley and avoid--at a minimum--providing data on your users to the government. The military and the tech industry are effectively inseparable: a military-digital complex. This book's tight storytelling and provocative arguments will make you see the news in a new light.

The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex

Surveillance Valley

Stas

"Camelot" was just a code name. The project's full official title was Methods for Predict- ing and Infiuencing Social Change and Internal War Potential." Its ultimate goal: to build a radar system for left-wing revolutions - a computerized early warning system that could predict and prevent political movements before they ever got off the ground. "One of the project's anticipated end products was an automated 'information collection and handling system' into which social researchers could feed facts for quick analysis. Essentially, the computer system would check up-to-date intelligence information against a list of precipitants and preconditions," writes historian Joy Rohde. "Revolution could be Stopped before its initiators even knew they were headed down the path to political violence."

Surveillance Valley quotes

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