Chatter, Patrick Radden Keefe
Chatter, Patrick Radden Keefe
List: $20.00 | Sale: $14.00
Club: $10.00

Chatter
Uncovering the Echelon Surveillance Network and the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping

Author: Patrick Radden Keefe

Narrator: Robertson Dean

Unabridged: 11 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/22/2005


Synopsis

How does our government eavesdrop? Whom do they eavesdrop on? And is the interception of communication an effective means of predicting and preventing future attacks? These are some of the questions at the heart of Patrick Radden Keefe’s brilliant new book, Chatter.

In the late 1990s, when Keefe was a graduate student in England, he heard stories about an eavesdropping network led by the United States that spanned the planet. The system, known as Echelon, allowed America and its allies to intercept the private phone calls and e-mails of civilians and governments around the world. Taking the mystery of Echelon as his point of departure, Keefe explores the nature and context of communications interception, drawing together fascinating strands of history, fresh investigative reporting, and riveting, eye-opening anecdotes. The result is a bold and distinctive book, part detective story, part travel-writing, part essay on paranoia and secrecy in a digital age.

Chatter starts out at Menwith Hill, a secret eavesdropping station covered in mysterious, gargantuan golf balls, in England’s Yorkshire moors. From there, the narrative moves quickly to another American spy station hidden in the Australian outback; from the intelligence bureaucracy in Washington to the European Parliament in Brussels; from an abandoned National Security Agency base in the mountains of North Carolina to the remote Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

As Keefe chases down the truth of contemporary surveillance by intelligence agencies, he unearths reams of little-known information and introduces us to a rogue’s gallery of unforgettable characters. We meet a former British eavesdropper who now listens in on the United States Air Force for sport; an intelligence translator who risked prison to reveal an American operation to spy on the United Nations Security Council; a former member of the Senate committee on intelligence who says that oversight is so bad, a lot of senators only sit on the committee for the travel.

Provocative, often funny, and alarming without being alarmist, Chatter is a journey through a bizarre and shadowy world with vast implications for our security as well as our privacy. It is also the debut of a major new voice in nonfiction.

About The Author

Patrick Radden Keefe is a fellow at The Century Foundation and the author of Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping. A graduate of Columbia University and Yale Law School, and the recipient of a Marshall Scholarship and a Guggenheim Fellowship, he is a regular contributor to The New Yorker, Slate, and many other publications. The Snakehead was a finalist for the J. Anthony Lukas Prize, awarded by the journalism school at Columbia University for excellence in American nonfiction writing.Robertson Dean has acted on- and off-Broadway and in many leading roles at regional theaters throughout the United States. His film work includes Star Trek: Nemesis and Vanilla Sky.


Reviews

I have read a bunch of books on spying and intelligence agencies over the years. Most of their authors allowed themselves the luxury of blurring the line between plainly observable / provable facts and wild flights of fanciful conjecture. This book is a refreshing change in that and other regards. Pa......more

Goodreads review by W.T.

This is a remarkable book about "sigint" (signals intelligence). The first half is a chilling detailing of how telecommunications of all sorts are swept up by numerous listening stations around the world, a central part of a UK-USA agreement (including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). The second......more

Goodreads review by Ryan

The most interesting aspect of this book is how much the world has changed since it was published 15 years ago. It's a quaint snapshot of a world beginning to really worry about technology and privacy issues right before smartphones and wi-fi connectivity blew up all around the world and caused us t......more

Goodreads review by Peter

A really good read and an interesting topic. The book is of course hindered by being written in the mid 2000s published before the iPhone existed. Still relevant despite being post 9/11 and pre Wikileaks.......more