The Surveillance History of the Internet

For many a dominant feature of a hypothetical utopic world is advanced science and technology. Not so long ago the present-day internet was pitched to the world as a utopic attainment. Which is the reason why I chose to take a deeper look at it. Understanding how the internet came into being can help one understand better the impact it has had and will have on the society. Going through ‘Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of Internet’ by Yasha Levine gave me quite some insights on the topic.

With the growing talks on the topic of internet privacy, many have started to see internet as a failed utopia but Levine begs to differ. There was no utopia to begin with. Unlike the belief of many, the internet was not born out of the need to have a communication system that could withstand nuclear attacks. The internet was always a military tool. It was a tool designed to support the military service of counterinsurgency and tracking. Its central purpose was to facilitate and enable domestic surveillance efforts.

Levine believes that the internet was designed with weaponization in mind from the start and that companies like Google, Facebook, and Amazon have all contributed to the US government's aggressive foreign policy. For many Internet companies, including Google and Facebook, surveillance is the business model. It is the base on which their corporate and economic power rests. These statements should be obvious, since we all know that these firms vacuum up information indiscriminately, but Edward Snowden's revelations mentioned in this book have fastened our attention on the National Security Agency. In fact, the NSA could not operate as it does without the help of Google, Facebook, and their peers. The internet "was conceived as a weapon and is a weapon today". Even the apparently opposing elements of the network are nonetheless dominated by American military interests.

In the epilogue Levine explains that the meticulous record-keeping for which Hitler's regime was notorious was made possible by using IBM machines. The same technology as internet was used by Nazis to facilitate the holocaust, which serves as a powerful reminder of how internet technology is deeply embedded in the culture it took roots from.