This was an interesting book for the first 100 pages as the pieces came together for fighting terrorism through information. After that the book became monotonous for me with very little intrigue and excitement. I struggled to finish the book. One thumb up. ( )

A well-researched book chronicling increasing surveillance in the U.S. Scary topic, so why does it often feel like a slog getting through the book? The debate between privacy and national security is intriguing, but the author spends a little too much time giving background on the players' careers. ( )

I heard about this book when reading the news reports about surveillance by the NSA – telephone records metadata and e-mails and other on-line info. Disclosures by Edward Snowden. It seemed to me that this kind of spying was already known. This book was written a few years ago, and gives the background to expansion of the government's efforts to maintain databases that could be used to identify terrorists or even to identify them while they are still planning an attack. The main focus of the book is John Poindexter, who made this his primary work, after the bombing of the US soldiers in Lebanon in 1983. ( )

This is not the book I thought it was going to be -- a serious history with analysis of how "America's surveillance state" came to be, with perhaps a look at what might happen in the future. Instead, it is a "you are there" journalistic look at key figures in the development of surveillance technologies; the reader sees them as they came up with ideas, discussed them with others, argued about others, got involved in Washington politics, etc. The author writes in bite-sized paragraphs that I found choppy and he often uses irritating metaphors and images, e.g., "As far as Washington horsetrading went, that was the nuclear option." Also, because most of the people he interviewed, starting with the "hero" of the tale, John Poindexter, were intimately involved in surveillance and intelligence, the book comes out somewhat one-sided. I did read/skim the whole thing, and I guess I learned a little, but it's not what I was hoping for.