Sunday, May 11, 2014

No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State

Glenn Greenwald's new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, will be published Tuesday.

From the blurb:
In May 2013, Glenn Greenwald set out for Hong Kong to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have astonishing evidence of pervasive government spying and insisted on communicating only through heavily encrypted channels. That source turned out to be the 29-year-old NSA contractor Edward Snowden, and his revelations about the agency’s widespread, systemic overreach proved to be some of the most explosive and consequential news in recent history, triggering a fierce debate over national security and information privacy. As the arguments rage on and the government considers various proposals for reform, it is clear that we have yet to see the full impact of Snowden’s disclosures.

Now for the first time, Greenwald fits all the pieces together, recounting his high-intensity eleven-day trip to Hong Kong, examining the broader implications of the surveillance detailed in his reporting for The Guardian, and revealing fresh information on the NSA’s unprecedented abuse of power with never-before-seen documents entrusted to him by Snowden himself.

Going beyond NSA specifics, Greenwald also takes on the establishment media, excoriating their habitual avoidance of adversarial reporting on the government and their failure to serve the interests of the people. Finally, he asks what it means both for individuals and for a nation’s political health when a government pries so invasively into the private lives of its citizens—and considers what safeguards and forms of oversight are necessary to protect democracy in the digital age. Coming at a landmark moment in American history, No Place to Hide is a fearless, incisive, and essential contribution to our understanding of the U.S. surveillance state.
Order the book here

1 comment:

  1. IF it is true that the Constitution is "the Law of the Land", and the Fourth Amendment "defines what ‘an authority’ (be it local, state, or federal) can ‘seize’ from ‘the people.’ (The Constitution differentiates between ‘person’ and ‘citizen,’ ‘person’ referring to any human being, citizen or not). The 4th Amendment applies to anyone under the jurisdiction of the United States...then, simply seizing the information from electronic sources IS an offense to the Fourth Amendment.
    IF the legal definition of "wiretapping" is, in fact, ":A form of electronic eavesdropping accomplished by seizing or overhearing communications by means of a concealed recording or listening device connected to the transmission line".... THEN, logically ,simply "gathering" our Electronic Data is contrary to the Fourth Amendment.
    SO... the argument has been turned around to say that 'until they actually start 'watching' your data which they have collected', there's no problem.
    This is not true. The very fact that your data has been 'seized' makes this a vilation of the Constitution....legally.
    Greenwald et al. are glossing over this fundamental legal problem. We are being presented with a 'limited hangout', and being manipulated to accept this malarky.

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