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Summary and Analysis of No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State
Based on the Book by Glenn Greenwald
By Worth Books OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA
Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4485-1
CHAPTER 1
Summary
Introduction
Glenn Greenwald, a constitutional lawyer, started a blog in 2005 with the aim of bringing attention to what he saw as alarming executive overreach in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Within weeks, news broke of a wide-ranging warrantless eavesdropping program authorized by the Bush administration. It was exactly the sort of thing Greenwald had feared, and his blog focused on the issue. Greenwald believes that surveillance, throughout history, has been a weapon used by governments against their citizens, and therefore it must be subject to the strictest oversight. It was largely due to his background in writing about this issue that whistle-blower Edward Snowden sought him out when looking for a journalist.
1. Contact
In December 2012, the former lawyer and present-day investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald, who wrote about surveillance issues for Salon and the Guardian, received an email from someone calling himself "Cincinnatus," promising interesting information and asking that Greenwald encrypt his email so he could send it. At the same time, filmmaker Laura Poitras contacted Greenwald about a major intelligence leak, possibly the biggest leak in history. Greenwald was convinced enough to get his Guardian editor to agree to pursue the story, though at the time, he did not connect the email and Poitras's leak.
The plan was to meet their mysterious source in Hong Kong. The Guardian sent with him Ewen MacAskill, their staff national security journalist. At the airport, Poitras handed Greenwald a thumb drive containing all of the information — thousands of files — that would later become famous. The first file on the drive, called, "README_FIRST," was a letter from the leaker describing his reasons for becoming a whistle-blower, as well as his intentions and principles. The letter was signed at the bottom: Edward Joseph Snowden.
Leading up to the Hong Kong trip, Greenwald had already received encrypted messages containing a small handful of top-secret documents detailing an NSA program that was surveilling citizens through Google, Apple, Facebook, Skype, and most communications systems in the United States. Reading the thumb-drive documents on the plane, he was blown away by the extent of the surveillance, almost unable to process its depth and breadth.
Need to Know: When Greenwald's longtime editor at the Guardian refuses to allow him to travel to China without a staff reporter on hand, Greenwald gets the first inkling of the pushback he will face from his employers, government, and fellow journalists as he follows the story of unparalleled domestic surveillance in the United States.
2. Ten Days in Hong Kong
When Poitras and Greenwald get to Snowden's hotel room in Hong Kong, Snowden has Greenwald put his cell phone in the minibar refrigerator to muffle communications. Greenwald begins his interview while Poitras films the event (footage that later appears in her acclaimed documentary Citizenfour). Snowden is young, articulate, and disillusioned by a surveillance system that he views as hostile to human and civil rights. Greenwald considers publishing the information on his own, but decides to do so under the umbrella of the Guardian, even after procedural conflicts suggest the Guardian editors are nervous about revealing such explosive information.
The public response is "instant and enormous" — and, at first, largely positive. As stories go up in succession, Poitras's footage of Snowden himself is released, in which he reveals his identity and details his motivations. As a precaution, Snowden goes into temporary hiding, and Greenwald at last returns to his home in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The first chapter of Snowden's major whistle-blowing is over, but those that follow will be still more harrowing, and put those motivations under the microscope.
Need to Know: As Snowden himself predicted, within a few days "debates" about Snowden and the released documents begin to question his credibility and motivations. As journalists are trying desperately to contact him, Snowden goes into temporary hiding. Though Greenwald is gratified by the response, he begins to lose faith in his fellow journalists' ability to synthesize the information instead of sensationalizing Snowden's act.
3. Collect It All
Greenwald exhaustively details the many revelations of the NSA spy programs that were — and are — underway, pairing them with images of the leaked cache of documents. The amount of spying is comprehensive, overwhelming, and damning.
First, Greenwald discusses the protocols of General Keith B. Alexander, who was head of the NSA from 2005–14, and who operated under the edicts "Collect it all," "Exploit it all," "Know it all." Next, Greenwald discusses the initiative PRISM, which collected data from all the major servers in America, including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Skype, among others — often with their permission.
Another program is BOUNDLESS INFORMANT, which collects, counts, and details data from every electronic transmission across the world, comprising billions of them every month, or more. (When the quantity of information became too much for the NSA to manage, they developed X-KEYSCORE, which allows live, real-time observation through a specialized search engine that searches all private electronic communications in existence.) BLARNEY, FAIRVIEW, OAKSTAR, and STORMBREW are similar programs that work with corporate partners and foreign nations to collect content and metadata from cell phones and devices connected to the Internet, and go so far as to tap underwater fiber-optic cables traveling under the North Atlantic.
We learn about the Five Eyes, which is the agreement among the English-speaking countries USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand and other nations to cooperate with intelligence-sharing. Greenwald also details how the NSA spies on the diplomatic communications of correspondents and participants in international trade groups and organizations, a practice prohibited by international law that gives the United States the edge in negotiations.
Need to Know: Phrases taken directly from internal NSA documents with regard to warrantless spying of individuals that may at first blush seem to be hyperbolic ("collect it all," "total intelligence") are not exaggerations, but directives.
4. The Harm of Surveillance
Greenwald reviews the history of COINTELPRO, an FBI surveillance program that monitored the political activity of dissident groups from 1956–1971, as well as surveillance under the Bush administration, which included observation of Quakers and students who were against the Iraq War. He also reveals, how, in 2012, during the Obama presidency, an investigation exposed a joint CIA-NYPD project that put all Muslim communities in the United States under surveillance. None of these has been effectively shown to fight terrorism, yet they have all received support from either the Republican or Democratic parties, or both.
This extreme surveillance has a deleterious effect on political dissent and even plain freedom of speech. Thus, Greenwald argues, domestic surveillance of that type is explicitly outlawed by the US Constitution.
Need to Know: Mass surveillance is a notion that goes very far back, at least to Jeremy Bentham's concept of the Panopticon building in the late 1800s. George Orwell also wrote cogently and illuminatingly of the effects of surveillance in his book 1984. In literature, the mere awareness of the possibility of being watched is painted as being sufficient to keep society under control. The fear of being watched and reported on can curb political dissent, freedom of thought, and freedom of action in an entire populace. "Privacy," writes Greenwald, "is a core condition of being a free person."
5. The Fourth Estate
The existence of an extremely powerful government-backed international data-collection and surveillance system also has grave implications for journalism, sometimes referred to as the "fourth estate." Greenwald describes the ways in which the American corporate media such as CNN, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and others cooperate with the government, filtering stories through US officials before publication, accepting narratives from the Pentagon without question, and generally taking the side of those in power.
Greenwald, Snowden, and Poitras, as well as their loved ones, find themselves directly in the line of fire, and frequently harassed by authorities. David Miranda, Greenwald's husband, is detained at Heathrow Airport for almost nine hours, and his laptop computer is mysteriously stolen, Snowden's girlfriend is followed and questioned, and the UK government actually forces the Guardian newspaper to burn its archives of the Snowden files. Meanwhile, the media accuse Snowden of being a "narcissist," and begin to ask if Greenwald should be prosecuted for cooperating with him.
Need to Know: Snowden's whistle-blowing throws into relief the extent to which the media cooperates with power. In fact, although his is a classic example — revealing wrongdoing by entrenched power — most or all major providers of news and their spokespeople choose to align with Washington over leakers. Greenwald asks: Is a society in which whistle-blowers and journalists are prosecuted, both by the government and the media, truly free?
Epilogue
Greenwald states that Snowden's main fear was that his whistle-blowing would not make a difference; that people wouldn't care about the government surveillance he'd risked his freedom to expose. In fact, people did care. Greenwald points to a bill that came very close to passing in Congress with bipartisan support — something that almost never happens. The bill was intended to defund the NSA's ability to collect metadata. In addition, President Obama's advisory panel on the issue found that the collection of metadata did not add to our ability to weed out or battle terrorists. Internationally, there was an outcry against the behavior of the United States in this respect. Nevertheless, Greenwald says, we must all remain vigilant and fight for our right to privacy. Many of the spying programs are ongoing, while Snowden remains a wanted man.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Summary and Analysis of No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State by Worth Books. Copyright © 2017 Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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