Ratings4
Average rating3.8
The intertwining forces of computers and espionage are reshaping the entire world: what was once the preserve of a few intelligence agencies now affects us all. BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera's narrative takes us through the Cold War and the birth of the Internet to the present era of hackers and surveillance. The book is rich with historical detail and characters, as well as astonishing revelations about espionage carried out in recent times by the UK, US, and China. Using unique access to the National Security Agency, GCHQ, Chinese officials, and senior executives from some of the most powerful global technology companies, Corera has gathered compelling stories from heads of state, hackers, and spies of all stripes into a groundbreaking exploration of the new space in which the worlds of espionage, diplomacy, international business, science, and technology collide.--Adapted from dust jacket.
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I view this book as equipping you to answer the question “Where is the line between the privacy of citizens and the ability to protect them from threats (terrorism, cybercrime, the potential of a hostile state to crash the grid in the event of full out war)?”. It does this by examining the modern (WW1-around Snowden) history of signals intelligence, cryptography, and hacking, and providing examples of mass surveillance winning wars, being used by totalitarian governments to suppress human rights, and successfully and unsuccessfully using surveillance/espionage to protect citizens from extremists and cyber criminals.
It also presents the arguments (with quotes) from a variety of people connected to the cyberintelligence world, and well enough that he had me wanting to agree with several different (and conflicting) stances throughout the book. If the title sounds compelling to you or you're interested in the modern questions on data collection and use, this won't give you much technical information, but it will provide you a lot of background on how we got to today and what some of the big issues are.
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