In ‘No Place to Hide’, Glenn Greenwald documents the complicity of the five eyes partners, of which New Zealand’s GCSB is a member, in the construction of an Orwellian global surveillance network operating in the dark, with negligible oversight, under the alarming institutional aegis “collect it all, sniff it all, partner it all, process it all, know it all, exploit it all.” The menacing overreach of the NSA, in violation of core constitutional guarantees, and the chilling construction of the architecture of oppression, is placed on trial by this constitutional and civil rights litigator turned journalist. Greenwald incisively prosecutes the NSA’s ambition to indiscriminately invade personal privacy globally without check or possibility of individual protection, as explicitly revealed in the top secret documents leaked by whistle blower Edward Snowden.
Greenwald’s expert analysis is a revelation of fearless investigative reporting in defence of civil liberties and core democratic values. Piercing through the high noise to signal ratio of the mainstream press, Greenwald systematically subjects Government propaganda and subservient media stenography, to a remorseless examination by trail lawyer logic. The resulting dissonance is both fascinating and frightening; on the one hand a reasoned, passionate, and erudite warning against the perils of sweeping state intrusion into our private lives, on the other a mutating political culture shredding hard fought for freedoms like confetti, and aggressively lauded by large factions of the supposedly watchdog media. Greenwald describes the hostility he encountered from members of his profession as “anger and even shame over the truth that adversarial journalism had exposed: reporting that angers the government reveals the real role of so many mainstream journalists, which is to amplify power.”
The final chapter headed “The Fourth Estate” cross-examines the unprecedented and escalating attack on whistle blowers and investigative reporters alike, ironically by the Obama administration that promised to be the most transparent administration in history. Here Greenwald assertively reclaims the core tenet of journalism “The idea of the fourth estate is that those who exercise the greatest power need to be challenged by adversarial pushback and an insistence on transparency; the job of the press is to disprove the falsehoods that power invariably disseminates to protect itself.” From start to finish Greenwald's reporting exemplifies this attitude of moral courage, complemented by Snowden's selfless act of conscience, it makes for a hugely inspiring read.
This book is part spy thriller, part dystopian nightmare, communicating an urgent clarion call to action in defence of our eroding civil liberties, a reminder of why the hard fought for freedoms that define our western democracies should not be abandoned to a sliding decent, an eviscerated mutilation into a society very different from the one we all too often take for granted.
Title: No Place to Hide
Author: Glenn Greenwald
ISBN:9781627790734
Published: 2014
Publisher: Metropolitan Henry Holt
