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"A fascinating, expertly researched, and beautifully written examination of the juxtaposition between openness and secrecy in the dark digital underbelly of the internet."--Alexandrea Ravenelle, author of
Side Hustle Safety Net: How Vulnerable Workers Survive Precarious Times "This pathbreaking book offers an original, unifying perspective for viewing seemingly unrelated empirical social phenomena--online drug trade, internet censorship circumvention, and the digital far right--by providing new insights into the tension and struggle between two opposing forces of society: individual rights and liberty on the one hand, and state control and surveillance on the other."--Tim Liao, Professor of Sociology and LAS Alumni Distinguished Professorial Scholar, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
"As technology continues to advance, books on cybercrime often become outdated even before they hit the shelves. Isak Ladegaard's framework of 'open secrecy' transcends these transformations to unite various covert phenomena, drawing on a treasure trove of data that could take an entire team of computer and social scientists to compile."--Marie Ouellet, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Simon Fraser University
"Want to understand more about how antisocial and illegal actors are using the web to further their agendas?
Open Secrecy is a spectacularly original, well-written, and deeply researched account. From the drug markets of the Silk Road to the white supremacist Daily Stormer, Ladegaard lays bare the ways in which these communities use the vulnerabilities of the technology to promote themselves. A must-read for anyone concerned about the direction of society. I'll definitely be assigning it to students."--Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology, Boston College
"As encryption technology becomes more mainstream and governments around the world scramble to regain their snooping capabilities, Isak Ladegaard provides important insight into how online secrecy empowers and protects all kinds of actors, both good and bad."--James Griffiths, author of
The Great Firewall of China: How to Build and Control an Alternative Version of the Internet
About the author
Isak Ladegaard is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong.
Summary
Uncovering how a diverse digital underground has been liberated by "open secrecy"—and how police crackdowns are making it stronger.
Advances in information technology have made it easier for shadowy groups to organize collective action. Using military-grade encryption, rerouting software, and cryptocurrencies, they move through cyberspace like digital nomads, often with law enforcement and other powerful actors on their tails. This book reveals how the same technology enables these groups to communicate and collaborate in public and semipublic spaces, making them both open and secret at the same time—and efforts to stop these groups provoke countermeasures with unintended, far-reaching consequences.
Isak Ladegaard begins by taking readers inside a digital economy for banned drugs that has survived numerous police crackdowns and is still thriving, nearly fifteen years after its genesis. He then examines how, in roughly the same time period, a community of activist software developers in China and other countries has been able to maintain paths to the open internet, again despite police interventions. Finally, he explains how the American far right uses the same tools to build movements based on paranoia and hate. Timely and perceptive, Open Secrecy helps readers understand how information technology, for better and worse, undermines state control.
