The Information Age has ushered in significant change not only to the work people do and how they communicate with each other, but also to the broad political landscape. In Digital Democracy: Policy and politics in the Wired World, editors Cynthia J. Alexander and Leslie A. Pal present 12 important essays by Canadian and American scholars on the impact of cyberspace on politics and the implications this impact has for our future as private citizens.

Digital Democracy

Computers & Technology

Deibert, Ronald J.

Cross, Bill

Ogden, Michael R.

Cavoukian, Ann

Mehta, Michael

Thorburn, Julie

Davis, Dineh M.

May, James H.

Alexander, Catherine

Stafford, Sue P.

Networking & Cloud Computing

Oxford University Press

Drawing on medium theory, which was first popularized by Marshall McLuhan, argues that world politics is currently undergoing rapid and fundamental transformations related to the advent of digital-electronic telecommunications. Portrays the emerging hypermedia environment as comprised of de-territorialized communities, fragmented identities, transnational corporations, and cyberspatial flows; but also of plural worlds, multiple realities and irrealities, and digital artifacts stitched together in a web of spectacle. Compares the change to the parchment codex and the rise of the Roman Catholic Church in the Middle Ages and the development of the printing press and the medieval-to-modern transformation of political authority. Paper edition (10713-7), $17.50. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Parchment, Printing, and Hypermedia

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Columbia Univ. Pr.

Cyberspace is all around us. We depend on it for everything we do. We have reengineered our business, governance, and social relations around a planetary network unlike any before it. But there are dangers looming, and malign forces are threatening to transform this extraordinary domain. In Black Code, Ronald J. Deibert, a leading expert on digital technology, security, and human rights, lifts the lid on cyberspace and shows what’s at stake for Internet users and citizens. As cyberspace develops in unprecedented ways, powerful agents are scrambling for control. Predatory cyber criminal gangs such as Koobface have made social media their stalking ground. The discovery of Stuxnet, a computer worm reportedly developed by Israel and the United States and aimed at Iran’s nuclear facilities, showed that state cyberwar is now a very real possibility. Governments and corporations are in collusion and are setting the rules of the road behind closed doors. This is not the way it was supposed to be. The Internet’s original promise of a global commons of shared knowledge and communications is now under threat. Drawing on the first-hand experiences of one of the most important protagonists in the battle — the Citizen Lab and its global network of frontline researchers, who have spent more than a decade cracking cyber espionage rings and uncovering attacks on citizens and NGOs worldwide — Black Code takes readers on a fascinating journey into the battle for cyberspace. Thought-provoking, compelling, and sometimes frightening, it is a wakeup call to citizens who have come to take the Internet for granted. Cyberspace is ours, it is what we make of it, Deibert argues, and we need to act now before it slips through our grasp.

Black Code: Inside the Battle for Cyberspace

Signal

Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet

Bestselling author and renowned technology and security expert Ronald J. Deibert exposes the disturbing influence and impact of the internet on politics, the economy, the environment, and humanity.&nbsp; Digital technologies have given rise to a new machine-based civilization that is increasingly linked to a growing number of social and political maladies. Accountability is weak and insecurity is endemic, creating disturbing opportunities for exploitation.&#8239;&nbsp; Drawing from the cutting-edge research of the Citizen Lab, the world-renowned digital security research group which he founded and directs, Ronald J. Deibert exposes the impacts of this communications ecosystem on civil society. He tracks a mostly unregulated surveillance industry, innovations in technologies of remote control, superpower policing practices, dark PR firms, and highly profitable hack-for-hire services feeding off rivers of poorly secured personal data. Deibert also unearths how dependence on social media and its expanding universe of consumer electronics creates immense pressure on the natural environment.&#8239;In order to combat authoritarian practices, environmental degradation, and rampant electronic consumerism, he urges restraints on tech platforms and governments to reclaim the internet for civil society.&nbsp; The Unabridged Bibliography: <a href="https://reset-bibliography.ca/">https://reset-bibliography.ca/</a>

Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society (The CBC Massey Lectures)

House of Anansi Press

Like a John Le Carré novel updated for the digital age, Chasing Shadows provides a gripping account of how the Citizen Lab, the world's foremost digital watchdogs, uncovered dozens of cyber espionage cases in countries around the world. In this real-life spy thriller, cyber security expert Ronald Deibert details the unseemly marketplace for high-tech surveillance, professional disinformation, and computerized malfeasance. He reveals how his team of digital sleuths at the Citizen Lab have lifted the lid on dozens of covert operations targeting innocent citizens everywhere. Chasing Shadows provides a front-row seat to a dark underworld of digital espionage, disinformation, and subversion. There, autocrats and dictators peer into their targets' lives with the mere press of a button, spreading their tentacles of authoritarianism through a digital ecosystem that is insecure, poorly regulated, and prone to abuse. The activists, opposition figures, and journalists who dare to advocate for basic political rights and freedoms are hounded, arrested, tortured, and sometimes murdered. From the gritty streets of Guatemala City to the corridors of power in the White House, this compelling narrative traces the journey of the Citizen Lab as it evolved into a globally renowned source of counterintelligence for civil society. As this small team of investigators disarmed cyber mercenaries and helped to improve the digital security of billions of people worldwide, their success brought them, too, into the same sinister crosshairs that plagued the victims they worked to protect. Deibert recounts how the Lab exposed the world's pre-eminent cyber-mercenary firm, Israel-based NSO Group--the creators of the phone-hacking marvel Pegasus--in a series of human rights abuses, from domestic spying scandals in Spain, Poland, Hungary, and Greece to its implication in the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

Chasing Shadows: Cyber Espionage, Subversion, and the Global Fight for Democracy

Internet & Social Media

Simon&Schuster

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