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  • Surveillance Valley

  • The Secret Military History of the Internet
  • By: Yasha Levine
  • Narrated by: LJ Ganser
  • Length: 10 hrs and 42 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (31 ratings)
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Surveillance Valley

By: Yasha Levine
Narrated by: LJ Ganser
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Summary

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.

©2018 Yasha Levine (P)2018 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about Surveillance Valley

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Vitally important work

Lays bare the origins and the essence of the Internet. The libertarian delusion it exposes is still present, even on the left.

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Necessary reading for anyone

Yasha Levine presents a deeply critical, exhaustive and thought provoking historical account of the internet and the state of online 'privacy'.

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Excellent read!!

For anyone who wants to understand the relationship between big tech and government, this book is very enlightening.

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Pedestrian history of computers by US military

A really rather bland biopic of the development and use of computers by the US military and intelligence services particularly centred on DARPA. Not massively overt, the narrative is clearly hostile to this military-technological intertwining and doesn't consider the many benefits that have come thanks to the development of computers, that military investment has been key to creating. There have of course been many awful things that occurred in the Cold War and big private firms have done some very shady things as part of that, but this book neither properly analyses those issues, nor provides a wider contextual history of DARPA, technology's development through the battlefield, and big power politics of the Cold War era. While the conclusion nicely points out some of these issues, it is still perhaps under noted the considerable scrutiny with which regulators globally (the US less so than in the EU and national level elsewhere) have addressed Microsoft, Google, Facebook and others, not to mention public backlash to certain issues. Understanding the power of technology and the need to make it work for good is something true throughout history and that isn't really properly understood here and that's a real pity.

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Scary Stuff

Quite an eye opener on the insecurity of 'secure' methods of Internet communications. Interesting history of Internet development and of the characters involved. Would recommend this book to anyone who has even a passing interest in Internet freedom and anonymity.

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