Dana Priest, William M. Arkin: Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State (2011)
Filed under book | Tags: · privacy, security, surveillance, united states
The top-secret world that the government created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks has become so enormous, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or exactly how many agencies duplicate work being done elsewhere. The result is that the system put in place to keep the United States safe may be putting us in greater danger. In Top Secret America, award-winning reporters Dana Priest and William Arkin uncover the enormous size, shape, mission and consequences of this invisible universe of over 1,300 government facilities in every state in America; nearly 2,000 outside companies used as contractors and more than 850,000 people granted ‘Top Secret’ security clearance.
A landmark expose of a new, secret ‘Fourth Branch’ of American government, Top Secret America is a tour de force of investigative reporting-and a book sure to spark national and international alarm.
Publisher Little, Brown and Company, New York/Boston/London, 2011
ISBN 0316194042, 9780316194044
336 pages
review (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times)
review (Richard Rhodes, The Washington Post)
research page
wikipedia
publisher
google books
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National Security Agency: Untangling the Web: A Guide to Internet Research (2007)
Filed under manual | Tags: · google, hacking, internet, research, search, security, technology, web
“The manual just released by the NSA following a FOIA request filed in April by MuckRock. The book is filled with advice for using search engines, the Internet Archive and other online tools.” (source)
Publisher Center for Digital Content of the National Security Agency, February 2007
Unclassified in May 2013
643 pages
via Marcell Mars, via Wired
PDF (from NSA.gov)
PDF (mirror at the MuckRock website)
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Richard Grusin: Premediation: Affect and Mediality After 9/11 (2010)
Filed under book | Tags: · affect, mass media, media, mediality, memory, preemption, remediation, security
The terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 have been called the world’s first live global media event. Responding to the immediacy and collective shock produced by live coverage of the collapse of the Twin Towers, print, televisual, and networked media have become obsessed with the pre-mediation of potential futures.
In an era of heightened securitization, US and global media have attempted to prevent a recurrence of such media trauma by ensuring that no future will be able to emerge into the present that has not already been premeditated in the past. Socially networked US and global media work to premediate collective affects of anticipation and connectivity, while also perpetuating low levels of apprehension or fear.
Following up on the groundbreaking work of media theory Remediation: Understanding New Media, Grusin develops the logic of premediation in terms of such concepts as mediality, the affective life of media, and the anticipation of security.
Publisher Palgrave Macmillan, 2010
ISBN 0230242529, 9780230242524
240 pages
review (Jussi Parikka, Leonardo)
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