A History of Internet Spying, Part I

In last year ’s documentary film Citizenfour , Edward Snowden said , “ I remember what the internet was like before it was being see . ” Snowden is just 31 long time former , so there ’s simply no agency this is dependable . Intelligence way have been keeping tabs on the internet since before Snowden was even born . They were instrumental in create it .

For the past yr or so , I ’ve been researching the pre - Snowden history of internet surveillance . We acknowledge from Snowden and a handful of NSA scoops that precede his revelations that word representation have been capable of vacuuming up vast swaths of internet communication for more than a decade . But what about those former days of ARPANET and telephone - provenance modems and BBSes ? What about the internet ’s infant and tot twelvemonth , when , in Snowden ’s recollection , it was n’t being watched ?

After more than a year of researching the topic , I still have more motion than solution . But I ’ve started to assemble the scattered pieces of what we know , and over the coming weeks — hopefully with your help — we’ll be exploring this buried history of cyberspace surveillance .

The long and the shortstop of it ? There ’s sufficient grounds that U.S. intelligence means have been supervise the internet since before it was evencalled the internet . In fact , it was a pretty important part of their jobs in the sixties and ’ 70s . After all , these were computer web that American intelligence agencies had in many mode helped to build up . government agency like the NSA , CIA and the UK ’s GCHQ had a vested interest in , and were “ other adopters ” of , networked computing tools .

Every Friday for the next five weeks we ’ll be examining the account of how intelligence representation have used and kept tabs on not only the internet , but various pre - internet web . We ’ll be discussing history that you might be in some way conversant , such as the creation of theARPANET . But we ’ll also take a look at some lesser studied networks such as COINS , COINS II , and PLATFORM — old intelligence agency agency net that might sound mystic if only because they do n’t yet have Wikipedia articles .

We ’d also wish you to assist . Did you work on the other net ? mayhap you have an uncle that worked for the DARPA contractorBBNor your mommy work at NSA . Maybe they have some interesting stories or documents from their fourth dimension edifice or monitoring these wonderful tools . Just maybe . you could institutionalize an email to[email protected](PGP Key ) , or deadtree papers to : Gawker Media c / o Matt Novak , 210 Elizabeth Street , New York , NY 10012 .

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This series is just the beginning of what I hope will be more investigation into how intelligence agencies have used the internet . Hopefully it can serve as a jumping off breaker point for historians to dig deeply . Because if we ’re going to understand the future of our strange and beautiful internet , our best guide just might be behind us .

Next workweek : The sixties and 70s : Like Mad workforce But For Super Nerds

double by Jim Cooke

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