[ih] Yasha Levine's Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet -- Some Questions

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 14/04/2018 09:47, Eric Gade wrote:
> Hello list members,
> 
> Please excuse the length of this email.
> 
> I am in the process of writing a review of Yasha Levine's new history of
> the Internet, "Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the
> Internet." His overall thesis is that the development of the Internet has,
> from the beginning, grown from "counterinsurgency" and surveillance
> operations, and that these aspects have not been adequately chronicled in
> other histories.

I know nothing of this whatever. However, I do know that the SIGINT community
has a history of using data links in support of their work since at least
as early as 1944, and certainly since they acquired their first Turing-equivalent
computers in the late 1940s. So why they would have wasted their time 20 years
later using an insecure researchy network stuffed with inquisitive academics is
beyond me.

In other words this doesn't pass the laugh test IMNSHO.

    Brian