Digital Imperialism & Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley CYR
Digital Imperialism & Yasha Levine’s Surveillance Valley
Today’s passage comes from the conclusion of one of my favorite books released this past year, Yasha Levine’s “Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet.” Please note that this quotation is somewhat truncated (as identified by the ellipsis) because there’s only so much writing you can fit into a 1K pixel info-graphic – you can find the full quotation on pages 268-269 of the hardcover, 1st edition of “Surveillance Valley” from Public Affairs.
Although the book was mostly ignored, or even panned by some in the (astoundingly sycophantic and inbred) mainstream Tech media for failing to provide a “smoking gun”, the reality is that Levine’s central arguments about the history of the internet and modern private surveillance are undeniably true and when the author veers off into theory, his ideas are supported just about as well as an independent journalist who doesn’t have Pentagon clearances could possibly have done. If anything, where Levine gets himself into trouble is when the limits of his technical knowledge cause him to very occasionally overstate his otherwise completely compelling case.
The book itself is effectively divided into two parts, with the first part looking at the history and true surveillance role of the internet and the second part focusing one what that means for our modern privacy rights. Spoiler: the conclusions are indeed, very grim.
Levine’s central thesis is that the internet itself has always been a military surveillance tool developed for, and funded by, a public-private partnership between the Pentagon, academic research labs and (now giant) private tech companies; companies who are themselves irrevocably intertwined with western intel agencies through their (often under reported but unarguably ongoing) role as military-intelligence contractors. Taken in this context, Levine essentially argues that corporate-backed harvesting, sorting and sale of massive quantities of your personal data fundamentally represents a highly lucrative self-funding mechanism for this now-gargantuan public-private surveillance partnership.
While this idea will probably keep most readers up at night, Levine’s careful tracing of both the history of network technology development and the deviation that development took from the quasi-libertarian “freedom” mythology used to market the internet, does a remarkable job of supporting that thesis. From the jungles of Vietnam and ARPANET through to the Snowden NSA leaks and Wikileaks “Vault 7″ disclosures, the author’s argument seems sufficiently borne out by both the historical record and the end result we find in an internet-powered world today. At this point, does it really even matter if these intertwined relationships between tech companies and intelligence that have produced our modern surveillance state are what the military-intelligence complex desired from the very beginning, or if it was merely a happy accident as the common mythology goes?
There are of course those who argue that Levine’s revelations in the first portion of Surveillance Valley are “old news” but for someone (such as myself) familiar with some, but not all of the history involved here, even this portion of the book was extremely eye opening. Furthermore, I can say with absolute certainty that a casual look at the way the internet is marketed to the vast majority of people in society will quickly reveal that tech companies are eager to keep the surveillance aspects of their business and the military history of the internet, as quiet as possible. Throughout the book, the author’s breezy writing style and refusal to get bogged down in a world of military acronyms and technical jargon make Surveillance Valley a surprisingly accessible work, even for a relative neophyte observer of internet surveillance.
It is however in the final portion of the book where Levine turns the world of online privacy on its head by examining the relationships between the famous online privacy advocates, tech corporations and western governments who have come together to promote the “Internet Freedom” movement.
Although some (even on the left) have taken this as a critique of Tor, Signal, Edward Snowden and the movement as a whole, a careful reading of Levine’s work reveals a far more nuanced discussion.
What the author is really criticizing is a general privacy culture that largely operates with a false sense of security because it asks too little and trusts too much. A culture in which it is somehow inappropriate to question why massive tech companies whose business model is *literally* corporate surveillance would funnel so much money into an emerging internet privacy movement and free tools to fight online surveillance. A culture which sells the idea that anyone, even the computer-illiterate, can obtain privacy by using a program funded by one branch of the government, at the exact same time as other, more sinister branches are devoted to obliterating that privacy. Indeed, the fact that these questions are so frequently framed as accusations by the very activists who genuinely want to fight internet surveillance, would seemingly to justify Levine’s attempts to ask them in their own right.
In the end, it’s far less important whether or not the corruption of this online privacy movement has already happened, than it is to understand just how easily it could happen without our knowledge – especially in a world where privacy activists, tech companies and intelligence services are intertwined like so much digital chicken-wire. And on that account, Levine’s work is unquestionably on target.
– nina illingworth
