I just ordered Glenn Greenwald's book, No Place To Hide. [View all]

[BlueCheese]

My local bookseller ran out of copies, so I ended up ordering it through Amazon, which lets you read the first chapter online even if you ordered a physical copy.

A few very interesting tidbits already:

1. Some people say that Edward Snowden is a coward because he didn't stay in the US and undergo the Chelsea Manning treatment or volunteer to face a firing squad at dawn. (Strangely, history doesn't think so poorly of Charles de Gaulle, the Dalai Lama or any number of exiles.) However, one important point is that Edward Snowden voluntarily identified himself as the source of the leaks. We know who he is not because the government found him out, but because he chose to reveal himself. As he wrote to Greenwald,

I want to spark a worldwide debate about privacy, Internet freedom, and the dangers of state surveillance. I'm not afraid of what will happen to me. I've accepted that my life will likely be over from my doing this. I'm at peace with that. I know it's the right thing to do. I want to identify myself as the person behind these disclosures. I believe I have an obligation to explain why I'm doing this and what I hope to achieve."

These are not the words of someone who wanted to escape the consequences for his actions and to keep living the good life in Hawaii.

2. What was Snowden's biggest fear? That despite the enormous scale of his revelations, that nothing would happen.

I only have one fear in doing all of this... that people will see these documents and shrug, that they'll say, "we assumed this was happening and don't care."

Now, in the light of the Snowden documents, a lot has happened. But it is true that some people have indeed decided to shrug, to say we knew this was happening, and to carry on unbothered. What has surprised and disappointed me most of all, however, is the source of some of this sentiment. I knew neo-cons and certain Republicans would be fully in favor of the NSA's massive surveillance programs. I did not expect that so many self-identified Democrats would find themselves also supporting them. Whether it's our leaders like Obama, Pelosi, Feinstein, and Kerry, or grassroots people even here on DU, it's shocked me that so many people would not only ignore, but actively defend these programs. Whether it's loyalty to a Democratic administration or something else, these are programs that would have been anathema during the Bush administration. Equally jarring is the attitude of many establishment journalists, who seem ready to classify perhaps the most important journalism in our nation's history as criminal activity.

Just from what I've read so far, I'm convinced. Edward Snowden and several tenacious reporters have revealed government misconduct on a gigantic scale-- misconduct that was conducted in secrecy and shielded by deliberate lies to the public. They have made us aware of a massive invasion of our rights in ways that have no place in a democracy. The surveillance state has grown completely out of control and must be reined in and dismantled, and we cannot accept anything less.