BZ Book Review 16: <No Place to Hide> by Glenn Greenwald + Bonus: Video Call with Edward Snowden

Key Takeaways

1. Privacy is crucial to our sense of freedom. When it is compromised, our individuality suffers and we tend to behave in a way that is expected of us.

2. Snowden thought of the internet as an extension of himself and his personality. This struggle for freedom on the internet and to inform the . general public of what was being done in its name was so meaningful to him that he gave up his well-paid senior job, his girl friend and family to do so. He forfeited his freedom to fight the oppression and invasion of privacy of the public.

3. NSA could collect all metadata from the public. Although metadata does not contain call content, it does consist of details such as phone numbers, call duration and time of call, which may be more telling than the actual contents. Normally NSA needs a warrant to look into US citizen’s private communications. However they don’t need a warrant to gather communication details from non-US citizens or between a n on-us citizen and a citizen

4. The NSA spies on foreign governments, even some US allies, for political and economic advantage, which is clearly a overstepping of boundaries with regard to its homeland security and anti-terrorism efforts.

5. The NSA and its closest allies sabotage global communications and encryption. (US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand)

6. The US mainstream media maintain pro-government views, because the government have a say about whether they can publish something.

Video Chat with Edward Snowden

On Jan 19, 2019, there was a video conference (Law vs. Power) held between Edward Snowden and interested parties from San Francisco. Here are some photos from the live event that day.

Inspirational quote: Some people don’t care about free speech, maybe and just maybe they have nothing to day. Some people don’t care about privacy and saying they have nothing to hide. Maybe and just maybe they have nothing to protect.