Review of 'No place to hide : Edward Snowden, the NSA and the surveillance state' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
The book is split into 5 chapters: the lead up to meeting Snowden; the craziness of those first days of reporting; an overview of the content of the documents; a philosophical exploration of why surveillance is bad; and an analysis of the press coverage following the releases.
The book is short and easy to read. The first two sections were totally engrossing and I blazed through them. The 3rd chapter did an excellent job at tying together many of the docs that have been reported on. For those of us who have been following the reporting heavily over the past year, it is difficult to remember the overall context as each week a new story comes down the pipe. This chapter does a good job of weaving many of the easy stories into a single, easy to understand narrative. Many connections were made for me here that went otherwise unnoticed. …
The book is split into 5 chapters: the lead up to meeting Snowden; the craziness of those first days of reporting; an overview of the content of the documents; a philosophical exploration of why surveillance is bad; and an analysis of the press coverage following the releases.
The book is short and easy to read. The first two sections were totally engrossing and I blazed through them. The 3rd chapter did an excellent job at tying together many of the docs that have been reported on. For those of us who have been following the reporting heavily over the past year, it is difficult to remember the overall context as each week a new story comes down the pipe. This chapter does a good job of weaving many of the easy stories into a single, easy to understand narrative. Many connections were made for me here that went otherwise unnoticed. The fourth section on surveillance and privacy serves as an excellent primer for those not well read in the topic. This was a low point for me, but would be excellent for sharing with the uninitiated. The final section has Greenwald going off on the press, tearing them apart for being government lapdogs and decrying the decline of adversarial journalism. A little overheated, but entertaining to read and certainly relevant in this day and age of "access" and "native advertising."
Overall I found the book to be pretty decent, but the first two chapters stand out as a brilliant first-person account of how this amazing Snowden story all began, and well worth the price of admission.
