No Place To Hide By Gleen Greenwald Book Reviews Examples

The main theme in this book is how the American government is able to listen to the America’s telephone conversations and read their messages without asking for permission, therefore the American citizens have no place to hide. The author, Gleen Greenwald is a journalist but he formerly was a constitutional and civil rights lawyer. Prior to writing this book, Gleen had been blogging and writing other books as well. He wanted to expose the dictatorial type of leadership of the American government especially after the 9/11, which the government said that it was because it was ready to do anything to protect its people from terrorist attacks. Gleen took on the subject of eavesdropping by the government after it was first published in the New York Times. According to Gleen, the America’s government disobeyed the fourth amendment that states that “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized” (Greenwald pg. 20).
Edward Snowden was also fighting for the rights of the American people by exposing the government’s secrets of eavesdropping on its people. Edward made contact with Gleen because he believed that he was principled and courageous hence it was difficult for him to be intimidated by the government (Greenwald pg.16). Edward contacted Gleen through another person called Cincinnatus (Greenwald pg. 36). Cincinnatus requested Gleen to install PGP (Pretty good privacy) which would help keep their email communication private (Greenwald pg. 38). Gleen did not pay too much attention to Cincinnatus email because he thought it did not have anything concrete, and therefore he did not reply immediately (Greenwald pg. 44). However, Cincinnatus was persistent and he contacted Gleen again after three days, and this forced Gleen to reply (Greenwald pg.45).
Gleen talks about how he ended up meeting Snowden in Hong Kong with the help of Laura Poitras (Greenwald pg.73) because Gleen completely ignored him and he had to find another way to contact him. Gleen was given secret document by the source (Snowden), to convince him to travel to Hong Kong to meet him, which showed how the government was intruding the privacy of its people Greenwald (Greenwald pg. 93). For him to publish them in the newspapers he had to show them to the editors first (Greenwald pg.101) and asked them not to edit them.
Gleen and Laura travelled to Hong Kong where they met Snowden at his hotel (Greenwald pg. 156). Before they met him they had to take precautions to ensure they were not being followed. Similarly when they were talking they had to remove batteries from their phone to ensure nobody was listening to them Greenwald (Greenwald pg. 162), and also placed pillows at the bottom of the door (Greenwald pg.164). Gleen questioned Snowden about his background and every little detail he could think of Greenwald (Greenwald pg. 171), he had earlier thought that he was an elderly man but was surprised to find out that he was just twenty nine years old (Greenwald pg. 156). Despite his young age, Snowden was a very intelligent person especially in the way he communicated; he likewise was very knowledgeable about the government’s activities (Greenwald pg. 172). Snowden was like every American citizen who believes in the good of their government, however, that changed when he started working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) (Greenwald pg. 180). Snowden gave an example where the CIA employed a Swiss banker so that they can easily spy on America bank transactions, however the CIA did not succeed and they opted to destroy the life of the banker (Greenwald pg. 182). Snowden said that the reason for putting himself in danger by exposing the America’s government was to defend his beliefs (Greenwald pg.195). Gleen then makes arrangement to publish the information given to him by Snowden (Greenwald pg. 253).
Snowden information was very huge that Gleen had a difficult time processing it (Greenwald pg. 382). The information contained every little detail of the government spying activities, for instance the report said that the government had listened to 124 billion telephone conversations in a span of thirty days (Greenwald pg. 391). Snowden provided orders given to the CIA by the government to eavesdrop on the American Greenwald (pg. 394). Gleen states that some of the actions of the government were genuine however; most of the spying had nothing to do with the security of the American people (Greenwald pg. 396). Snowden’s information also showed how the technological companies collaborated with the government to spy on Americans (Greenwald pg. 452). For example, Microsoft has allowed NSA to have access to Skype and sky drive (Greenwald pg.454).
Gleen talks about how people’s actions will be limited if they knew they were being watched and that is why people value privacy so that they can be free to do as they wish (Greenwald pg. 630). However, he said surveillance can be good at times because people will behave well because they know someone is watching them (Greenwald pg. 663). Gleen says that Snowden blew the whistle in a different way because he had worked with the government so he knew how to protect himself. Gleen says that Snowden did the right thing because he emphasized that the actions of the Government were wrong and should be stopped (Greenwald pg 949).

Work cited

Greenwald, Glenn. No Place to Hide. Penguin Books Limited, 2014. Print.