The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World's Most Wanted Man (2014) - Plot & Excerpts
YOU MUST READ THIS BOOK!... Just don't buy it yourself. You could be put on a terrorist watch list. Have a friend buy it for you.This reads like a whistleblower/spy/thriller. Revelation: The G20 world leaders and their staff were in London for a summit in 2009. They had their electronic devices hacked through fake Internet cafes setup around the meeting site. The UK's intelligence service had a field day.So what's the takeaway from all this? I don't know. Every leader of every country had to make a statement of outrage after the files were published in order to save face with their citizens. But this outrage had to be tempered because the US is such a vital partner to all. Every country spies on every other country, friend or foe. Yes, innocent citizens like us are being watched and listened to by our benevolent, overly protective, overly paranoid government. If someone on an NSA watch list accidentally dials your phone number you could be viewed as part of a terrorist network. Next you could become collateral damage in the war on terrorism.How much spying is enough? How much is too much? Information is treasure. Whoever has the most treasure wins. Which country do you want to live in? The one with the most treasure, of course. USA all the way! This book is not only devoted to Snowden. It describes his history but I think this is far from Greenwald story. Rather it is about influence of revealing fact that NSA spies on everybody. I think that even Angela Merkel was aware that she is spied but not that her every connection was recored etc. Is this story shocking? I don't think so. NSA collects all possible data like a vacuum cleaner and tries to find a needle in the haystack. Probably this is tool which has powerful capabilities but so far as was stated in this book that it was used to fight with terrorism without any major success. Rather it is very tempting tool for abuse like espionage on competing international business. From my point of view this is not so effective, because NSA has to know which exactly telephone numbers or other forms of addresses they need to monitor. It is impossible to process every message they collect. So they collect stuff for future. All in all book makes good reading but it is not something special. It maybe stress and make me more aware about influence of Snowden case on politics.
What do You think about The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The World's Most Wanted Man (2014)?
Badly written and boring. This book does not add much to what was previously revealed by newspapers.
—Aline
