Stephen Graham: Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism (2010)

22 October 2012, dusan

Filed under book | Tags: · city, iraq, israel, military, neoliberalism, security, surveillance, technology, terrorism, urbanism, war

A powerful exposé of how political violence operates through the spaces of urban life.

Cities are the new battleground of our increasingly urban world. From the slums of the global South to the wealthy financial centers of the West, Cities Under Siege traces the spread of political violence through the sites, spaces, infrastructure and symbols of the world’s rapidly expanding metropolitan areas.

Drawing on a wealth of original research, Stephen Graham shows how Western militaries and security forces now perceive all urban terrain as a conflict zone inhabited by lurking shadow enemies. Urban inhabitants have become targets that need to be continually tracked, scanned and controlled. Graham examines the transformation of Western armies into high-tech urban counter-insurgency forces. He looks at the militarization and surveillance of international borders, the use of ‘security’ concerns to suppress democratic dissent, and the enacting of legislation to suspend civilian law. In doing so, he reveals how the New Military Urbanism permeates the entire fabric of urban life, from subway and transport networks hardwired with high-tech ‘command and control’ systems to the insidious militarization of a popular culture corrupted by the all-pervasive discourse of ‘terrorism.’

Publisher Verso Books, London, 2010
ISBN 1844678369, 9781844678365
432 pages

review (Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian)
review (Jeff Heydon, review31)
review (George Steinmetz)
review (Alice O’Connor)
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The CryptoParty Handbook (2012)

4 October 2012, dusan

Filed under handbook, sprint book | Tags: · anonymity, cryptography, email, encryption, floss, hacking, internet, open source, privacy, security, software, surveillance, technology, web

This handbook is designed to help those with no prior experience to protect their basic human right to Privacy in networked, digital domains. By covering a broad array of topics and use contexts it is written to help anyone wishing to understand and then quickly mitigate many kinds of vulnerability using free, open-source tools. Most importantly however this handbook is intended as a reference for use during Crypto Parties.

Facilitated by Adam Hyde
Core Team: Marta Peirano, Asher Wolf, Julian Oliver, Danja Vasiliev, Malte Dik, Brendan Howell, Jan Gerber, Brian Newbold,
Assisted by Teresa Dillon, AT, Carola Hesse, Chris Pinchen, ‘LiamO’, ‘l3lackEyedAngels’, ‘Story89’, Travis Tueffel
Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 Unported license
386+ pages
via Julian Oliver

discussion and criticism (Liberationtech list)

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