** Featured as a Guardian Long Read **

'[A] fast-paced, myth busting expose' Max Blumenthal, author of The Management of Savagery

'Contentious... forceful... salutary' The New Yorker

EVERYTHING WE HAVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT THE DEMOCRATIC NATURE OF THE INTERNET IS A MARKETING PLOY.

As the Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown, private corporations consider it their right to use our data (and by extension, us) which ever way they see fit. Tempted by their appealing organisational and diagnostic tools, we have allowed private internet corporations access to the most intimate corners of our lives.

But the internet was developed, from the outset, as a weapon.

Looking at the hidden origins of many internet corporations and platforms, Levine shows that this is a function, not a bug of the online experience.

Conceived as a surveillance tool by ARPA to control insurgents in the Vietnam War, the internet is now essential to our lives. This book investigates the troubling and unavoidable truth of its history and the unfathomable power of the corporations who now more or less own it.

Without this book, your picture of contemporary society will be missing an essential piece of the puzzle.

'A masterful job of research and reporting about the military origins of the 'world wide web' and how its essential nature has not changed in the years since its creation during the Cold War.' - Tim Shorrock, author of Spies For Hire

An explosive, revisionist history of the dark past, and darker present of the internet.

About the Author

Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist and author.

Born in Leningrad, he grew up in San Francisco and now lives in New York. He has reported from all over the world. See more of his work at yashalevine.com

Reviews
Contentious... forceful... salutary * The New Yorker *
'Surveillance Valley is perhaps one of the most deeply disturbing books of the year. It leaves no illusions intact ...' -- Scroll.in
Gripping and hugely readable, Surveillance Valley is an essential book which painstakingly pieces together the complex origins, and current role, of a technology that has become so ingrained in our lives -- All About History



Book Information
ISBN 9781785785719
Author Yasha Levine
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint Icon Books
Publisher Icon Books
Weight(grams) 230g
Dimensions(mm) 253mm * 235mm * 5mm