Bentham’s panopticon [1] has often been evoked, in recent times, in relation to findings of government-sponsored mass surveillance initiatives. Large quantities of sensitive documents leaked to the press have shown how progress in computing and networking was applied by intelligence agencies in innovative, focused, and scalable ways, to sustain counterterrorism efforts on a global scale, raising, at the same time, concerns on the privacy implications and on the soundness of the underlying legal frameworks.

The second edition of this book, written by Newton Lee, editor-in-chief of ACM Computers in Entertainment, presents a comprehensive account of past and current initiatives in the field of total information awareness, examining history, strategies, and technologies with a thought-provoking approach that will appeal to both technical and nontechnical readers.

The first three parts of the book are used to provide historical perspective (“Counterterrorism History: Then and Now”), summarize strategies (“Counterterrorism Strategies: Causes and Cures, War and Peace”), and to give an introduction to technologies in the field of counterterrorism (“Counterterrorism Technologies: Total Information Awareness”). The other two parts discuss cyberwarfare fundamentals, together with techniques for attack prevention and response. Sociological aspects are presented, such as the role of cybersecurity training in higher education, as well as options to engage with “Generation Z” students (those born after 2000) as a precursor to recruitment with government service. Applications of artificial intelligence and gamification are also introduced, and references are provided to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Cyber Grand Challenge (2014-2016), “to build high-performance computers that can play Capture the Flag (CTF), a computer security competition format pioneered and refined by the hacker community over the past two decades.”

This is a very rich, accurate, and well-documented book, full of references to press sources, which can help in getting a sense of how many initiatives, concerns, and approaches exist in the field of counterterrorism and cybersecurity. At the same time, the numerous examples quoted in the text challenge the effectiveness and the cost of the approaches discussed, both in financial terms and terms of impact on individual privacy.

This contribution should be seen as a useful reference within the debate on ethics and appropriateness of mass surveillance initiatives that is still unfolding, and is likely to continue for years to come, while technological progress continues to provide the tools to realize the visions conceived by thinkers and writers of our past.

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