Yasha Levine is an investigative journalist for Pando Daily, a San Francisco-based news magazine focused on covering the politics and power of big tech. He has been published in Wired Magazine, the Nation, Slate, Penthouse, the New York Observer, Playboy, Not Safe For Work Corp, Alternet, and many others. He has also appeared on network television, including MSNBC, and has had his work profiled by the New York Observer, Vanity Fair, and the Verge, among others.

"Starting in the early 1960s, there was fear in America about the proliferation of computer database and networking technologies. People worried that these systems were going to be used by both corporations and governments for surveillance and control. Indeed, the dominant cultural view at the time was that computers were tools of repression, not liberation -- and that included the ARPANET, the military research network that would grow into the Internet we use today. Surveillance Valley starts in the past, but moves into the present, looking at the private surveillance business that powers much of Silicon Valley and the overlap between the Internet and the military-industrial complex. It also investigates and uncovers the close ties that exist between U.S. intelligence agencies and the anti-government privacy movement that has sprung up in the wake of Edward Snowden's leaks. The Internet was developed as a weapon, and remains a weapon today. American military interests continue to dominate all parts of the network, even those that supposedly stand in opposition"