Summary Of Glenn Greenwald's Book 'No Place To Hide'

Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide is in part a first-person narrative on the history of the events leading to the greatest intelligence material leak in the US history, and in part an attempt to assess the impact and ethics of that leak. His previous publication like How Would a Patriot Act? and A Tragic Legacy proves him as someone dedicated to fight against abuse of power. In this book, he posits that converting the Internet from tool for freedom to a tool for surveillance, NSA has produced the “most extreme and oppressive weapon of state intrusion human history has ever seen” (Greenwald 6). The author not only reveals the greatest leak in the US history, but also brings home the state of the Media in twenty-first century. By doing

He uses one-third of the book narrating how the contact with Snowden was established, and how he accessed all the confidential document from the biggest whistleblower in the modern US history. The use of first-person narrative makes it more exciting and appealing for the readers, as a broad spectrum of readers could be easily get bored and overwhelmed with the overload of the NSA documents. In “ten days in Hong Kong”, Greenwald takes us through his sleepless nights, deadlines and ultimatums, in order to explain how some journalists, editors, and lawyers were eager to publish the leaks, while others were more cautious about the devastating outcome (Greenwald 63-69). This style of writing induce the sense of realism in the readers, as well as makes the read interesting. In the same story, Greenwald also covers the story and intent of Snowden for leaking the NSA documents. Snowden could have easily dumped all the information in the internet, but his true intentions were to show the “American citizens and people around the world about what is being done to their privacy” and let people decide it instead of destroying the system (Greenwald

He claims that US media often inclines towards government’s interest by amplifying instead of scrutinizing “its message and carrying its dirty work” (Greenwald 210). To illustrate this, Greenwald writes about the article written in NY Times which called him an activist for not reporting to an editor (Greenwald 212). Further, Snowden was also demonized and bullied based on his background by different authors and politicians (223). The readers can find Snowden’s revelation as a sympathetic one, however based on perspective one might call him a traitor, while other can call him brave. The fact that he has safeguard some information which if revealed can harm direct US security interests is dubious, however revealing the secrets has for sure damaged reputations of diplomats and officials. He explains the reason of doing it as: “I don’t see myself as a hero because what I’m doing is self-interested: I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity”(Greenwald