India's Scroll reviews Surveillance Valley: "perhaps one of the most deeply disturbing books of the year"

A really nice review of Surveillance Valley in India's Scroll by Huzaifa Omair Siddiqi:

"Surveillance Valley, Yasha Levine’s new book, posits an unsettling new thesis: the internet, and all that is in based on it, is not only a tool developed under the aegis of the US military and intelligence agencies, but is also a worldwide surveillance network that clothes itself in the garb of individual freedom and apolitical technocratism.

"All major tech companies can be seen to be in bed with the state: Amazon manages cloud computing services for the CIA; Peter Thiel’s PayPal operates Palantir Technologies, which does data mining for the NSA and CIA; and Facebook has former DARPA head Regina Dugan running its virtual reality programme which can be used by the military to build a VR environment that can simulate cyberwars. The relationship between these tech companies and the US government varies only by degrees; Google stands out due to its immense size and capability for surveillance and data mining. All tech companies are equally guilty.

"Surveillance Valley is perhaps one of the most deeply disturbing books of the year. It leaves no illusions intact; none of the heroes of the internet, be they Google, Tor, Snowden or Assange, can offer us a way out of this universal web of surveillance and control."

Read the whole review here.