The internet, from its inception, was created to be a tool of mass surveillance. It was developed first as a counterinsurgency tool for the Vietnam War and the rest of the Global South, but like many devices of foreign policy naturally it made its way back to US soil. Yasha Levine, in his book Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, chronicles the linear history of the internet’s birth at the Pentagon to its now ubiquitous use in all aspects of modern life.

Levine describes the early concept of the internet as “an operating system for the American empire, an information system that could collect all this data and that could provide useful, meaningful information to the managers of the world.”

This vast trove of personal data in the hands of corporations and security agencies, such as the FBI and the NSA, presages a terrifying dystopia. For when the government watches us 24 hours-a-day we cannot use the word liberty. This is the relationship between a master and a slave.