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Yasha Levine 6 Feb 18
Surveillance Valley on sale today. Read about the internet's origins as a counterinsurgency weapon: an early warning radar system for human societies — from the Vietnam War to the Tor Project.
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Yasha Levine 6 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
From the legendary historian Stuart Ewen: "Defying common Internet tropes that present a battle between valiant and independent rebels versus omnipresent state and corporate powers, no one comes out of this book looking clean."
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Yasha Levine 6 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Fans of the Tor Project and other USG-funded privacy tech might want to pick up a copy — or actually, you probably don't. It won't give comfort to your myths. Tor would never disclose possible security weaknesses to the federal government before telling its users, right?
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Yasha Levine 6 Feb 18
Replying to @MaxBlumenthal
"In this fast-paced, myth-busting expose, Yasha Levine documents how a collection of spooks, cybernetic fanatics and libertarian oligarchs have exploited the internet to promote regime change abroad and establish a totalistic spying network at home." —
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Yasha Levine 6 Feb 18
Replying to @thebafflermag
Hell yeah. Surveillance Valley is on the front page of . It's an honor! (It's an excerpt from the prologue.)
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Yasha Levine 6 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
"Some even dreamed of creating a sort of early warning radar for human societies: a networked computer system that watched for social and political threats and intercepted them in much the same way that traditional radar did for hostile aircraft."
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Yasha Levine
The found that the internet was used to spy on millions of Americans as early as 1972, as soon as it was created. You won't read about this episode in any other book about the internet because it doesn't sit well with our culture's tech utopia myth.
7:15 AM - 7 Feb 2018
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by: Yasha Levine @yashalevine
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Yasha Levine 7 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
The internet is a weapon: The first functional demonstration of TCP/IP involved a simulation of a NATO war with the Soviet Union. The guy who ran the test: Vint Cerf, Internet "Founding Father" and Google Evangelist.
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Yasha Levine 7 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Most Russians know the names of the people who privatized their economy. Do you know the name of the man who privatized the internet? He exists. I talked to him.
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Yasha Levine 12 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
In 1969, MIT students were convinced that the ARPANET — the network that became the internet — was a CIA counterinsurgency project aimed at destroying leftwing movements. So...
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Yasha Levine 12 Feb 18
Replying to @Powells @THSEA
Thanks to for hosting Surveillance Valley. Next up: Seattle’s .
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Yasha Levine 13 Feb 18
Replying to @THSEA
Tonight: in Seattle at 7:30 pm. Talking about Surveillance Valley and the counterinsurgency origins of the internet.
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Yasha Levine 14 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
In San Francisco? Check out Surveillance Valley! Green Apple Books on the Park, 7:30pm.
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Yasha Levine 17 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Thanks to Books Inc in Mountain View for hosting Surveillance Valley last night. And thanks to everyone who came to hear the talk and bought books. Books can't be written and journalism can't be done without your support!
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Yasha Levine 17 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
The West Coast leg of the Surveillance Valley book tour is over. Next up: a blowout end-of-tour reading in New York City — in DUMBO, Brooklyn to be exact. Be there.
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Yasha Levine 18 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Our government spends hundreds of millions of dollars on internet-based influence ops every year: the State Department, USAID, BBG, Air Force and Pentagon's US Strategic Command
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Yasha Levine 21 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Found this US Army predictive analytics slide from a conference I went to a few years ago. Just another data point proving Surveillance Valley's thesis: the internet was always about surveillance, influence and prediction.
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Yasha Levine 21 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Oh yeah: BUY THE BOOK!
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Yasha Levine 21 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Why do the feds love grassroots crypto? H'mmm....
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Yasha Levine 25 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Thanks to everyone who came out to the talk in DUMBO, Brooklyn!
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Yasha Levine 26 Feb 18
Replying to @rjeskow
I talk to about Surveillance Valley and the internet's forgotten history as a counterinsurgency project.
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Yasha Levine 27 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
“The Silicon Spies: Public Money and Private Surveillance" <— an excerpt from Surveillance Valley
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Yasha Levine 27 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
"The ARPANET was first used to spy on Americans in 1972, when it was employed to transfer surveillance files on antiwar protesters and civil rights leaders that the US Army had collected."
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Yasha Levine 27 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
"By the time Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the NSA in the summer of 2013, at least a dozen publicly disclosed US government programs were leveraging open source intelligence to predict the future."
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Yasha Levine 27 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
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Yasha Levine 27 Feb 18
Replying to @yashalevine
"The dream of building a global computer system that could watch the world and predict the future—it had a long and storied history in military circles."
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Yasha Levine 3 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
FYI: The Tor Files: Transparency for the Dark Web.
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Yasha Levine 5 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
The internet: an early warning radar system for human society. Surveillance Valley.
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Yasha Levine 5 Mar 18
Replying to @THSEA
Out takes from my talk at Seattle's . "Why does the government care about you? Are you trying to overthrow it? Well, actually, don't answer that."
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Yasha Levine 5 Mar 18
Replying to @THSEA
Q: How did American society lose its fear of computers as social control and get infected with tech utopianism? A: "Memory tracks with power. We remember things that power wants us to remember. We forget things that go against power." —From my talk at Seattle's .
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Yasha Levine 6 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
Know your history:
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Yasha Levine 7 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
The Internet is a giant influence machine. As it integrates with our lives more and more, the more powerful the influence becomes. Remember: Influence is Facebook’s busines model.
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Yasha Levine 9 Mar 18
Replying to @thisishellradio
"The real history of the internet has never really been told..." At least not until now! Check out my interview with Chuck at about the giant, nuclear submarine-sized hole in our cultural memory of the internet.
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Yasha Levine 12 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
More highlights from my Surveillance Valley media blitz. Here I am on Portland's KATU 2 "Afternoon Live" freaking people out about the internet — right after a segment on "Kissable Lips for Valentine's."
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Yasha Levine 12 Mar 18
Replying to @THSEA
"The naive outrage about Russia's weaponization of the internet is based on a deeply flawed premise: the idea that there was a point in the internet's history when it *wasn't* used as a weapon." —From my talk at Seattle's .
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Yasha Levine 16 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
"The future is hijacked, thanks to generals, Google and the government ... fascinating study of Potomac fervor from Vietnam to Silicon Valley."
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Yasha Levine 16 Mar 18
Replying to @yashalevine
That Google helps the military build more efficient systems of surveillance and death shouldn't be surprising. The company has spent the last 15 years selling souped-up versions of its information technology to mil and intel agencies.
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