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A review by drifterontherun
No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Glenn Greenwald
5.0
There are so many ways that a book like this could have been written, so it's somewhat fitting that in the end Glenn Greenwald takes what could have been 3 different books and combined them into one. The first third is undeniably the best and reads like a spy thriller. This section contains information from Greenwald's initial meeting with Snowden up to the moment they part and Snowden embarks on his now well-known escape from Hong Kong and the potential threat of extradition.
The second third is far more technical and entirely consists of Greenwald dissecting various NSA documents and photocopying them into the pages of his book. As a result, after the breakneck speed that my fingers had been turning pages, I found myself bogged down in increasingly complicated terminology that Greenwald nevertheless does his best to make accessible. I am glad in any case that the whole book didn't consist solely of this.
The last third of the book is Greenwald as crusading journalist. He cites the outcry both on the part of civil rights defenders against the NSA and on various media personalities and politicians against himself and Edward Snowden. It doesn't lend much light on the subject that anyone who followed it as intensively in the news as I did might have hoped for, though it does do a great deal to reinforce the reality that is the bought and sold, spineless, despicable cretins that are meant to represent us in Washington. On this issue at least, there is no daylight between the parties. You have traitorous cretins like Representatives Peter King and Mike Rogers in the Republican Party, and equally corrupt scum like Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Democrat Party.
Despite my disappointment in the lack of new revealed information, I still find this book deserving of 5 stars simply in recognition of the courage and dedication it took both to report on this, as Greenwald did so expertly, and more significantly to reveal it in the first place. I have my disagreements with some of the other things Greenwald has written about, but in the case of the threat of government surveillance, the NSA, and the heroism of Edward Snowden and whistleblowers like him, I couldn't be more in agreement and I hail Greenwald's work.
Best when paired with Laura Poitras' recent documentary on the subject, "Citizenfour".
Special shout out to my good friend, Griffin, whose present of this book is one of the best I've ever gotten!
The second third is far more technical and entirely consists of Greenwald dissecting various NSA documents and photocopying them into the pages of his book. As a result, after the breakneck speed that my fingers had been turning pages, I found myself bogged down in increasingly complicated terminology that Greenwald nevertheless does his best to make accessible. I am glad in any case that the whole book didn't consist solely of this.
The last third of the book is Greenwald as crusading journalist. He cites the outcry both on the part of civil rights defenders against the NSA and on various media personalities and politicians against himself and Edward Snowden. It doesn't lend much light on the subject that anyone who followed it as intensively in the news as I did might have hoped for, though it does do a great deal to reinforce the reality that is the bought and sold, spineless, despicable cretins that are meant to represent us in Washington. On this issue at least, there is no daylight between the parties. You have traitorous cretins like Representatives Peter King and Mike Rogers in the Republican Party, and equally corrupt scum like Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the Democrat Party.
Despite my disappointment in the lack of new revealed information, I still find this book deserving of 5 stars simply in recognition of the courage and dedication it took both to report on this, as Greenwald did so expertly, and more significantly to reveal it in the first place. I have my disagreements with some of the other things Greenwald has written about, but in the case of the threat of government surveillance, the NSA, and the heroism of Edward Snowden and whistleblowers like him, I couldn't be more in agreement and I hail Greenwald's work.
Best when paired with Laura Poitras' recent documentary on the subject, "Citizenfour".
Special shout out to my good friend, Griffin, whose present of this book is one of the best I've ever gotten!