For Lessig, this is the way surreptitious networks of capital and influence perpetuate inequality in the United States.
Rapleaf has a dubious reputation because it built its business on the aggressive and surreptitious collection of social network data and matched it to email addresses.
The Post said a budget document defined network exploitation as "surreptitious virtual or physical access to create and sustain a presence inside targeted systems or facilities".
The Post reported a parallel effort, code-named GENIE, which it described as an effort by American intelligence officials working for the N.S.A. and the military's Cyber Command to insert surreptitious controls into foreign computer networks.
As cellphones become smarter, they may also offer kids a surreptitious avenue to the Web.
These private networks are also being created at a time when the federal government is investigating the surreptitious collection of personal data by third-party networks.
But the perception of an N.S.A. intrusion into the networks of major Internet companies, whether surreptitious or with the companies' cooperation, could hurt business, especially in international markets.
Their legacies include massive construction programmes for housing, highways and higher education; huge pension obligations to public employees; the highest minimum wage in the country; vast entitlement programmes; and an extraordinarily sophisticated approach to municipal finance through a Byzantine network of semi-autonomous agencies that allows the surreptitious issuance of ever more debt.
Later, his network acquired another customer: North Korea, which was desperate for a more surreptitious way to build nuclear weapons after the United States had frozen the North's huge plutonium-production facilities in Yongbyon.
"The portions we released today we felt were safe for release, and we didn't believe they contained any surreptitious messages or coded signals that would be designed to alert parts of the terrorist network," he said.
