This was a fairly amazing book in many ways. I'm amazed at how quickly it was put together, it manages to get up to early this year, and it is amazing how gripping the story is. It is also an amazingly important book. Many of the things being done in our name are wrong and illegal. A free press which guarantees we know what is going on is vital. This book lays out the facts in a clear and exciting manner. Great stuff. ( )

Author appears to be tech illiterate. Otherwise good if extremely depressing book. Five years on and things actually got worse so this turned out to have had less of an effect than people (and probably Snowden himself) had hoped for. ( )

Encrypt everything. Do it now. ( )

This is an amazing account of whistle-blower Edward Snowden and his leak of intelligence documents to the press concerning the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs conducted against nearly all U.S. citizens, as well as those abroad, even including heads of state of allied countries. This release sparked debates worldwide about the needs for mass surveillance that infringe on our civil liberties and rights to privacy, as well as the need for a free press. Shockingly, the country even more zealous than ours in seeing this situation resolved in favor of its intelligence community was Britain, who citizens do not have a Bill of Rights with freedom of speech and the press to protect them from such invasive actions. The claims that all of this is necessary in the fight against terrorism lacks strength when no one can prove that even one terrorist attack has been thwarted due to these practices. As I write this I am in horror that because it is being posted on the Internet, I can be put on some government watch list simply because I commend Snowden for his actions in making us all aware of what our government has been doing to us. Making this worse is the fact that he was forced to seek asylum in Russia of all places because he is safer there! We have much to be ashamed of. I think of Snowden as being similar to Daniel Ellsberg and hope that our government does the responsible thing – enact meaningful curbs on such intelligence gathering with realistic oversight and brings Snowden home to the U.S.A. I can’t wait to see the movie. ( )

A dry subject was very well written as a chronological thriller. I particularly enjoyed this, especially the chapters on the negotiations between the US govt and the Guardian. The chapter on the UK govt's reaction made my blood boil more than a little. An excellent read. ( )