Books

Below is a listing of interesting books about the various topics covered by this weblog:

The NSA     The Snowden Revelations     Signals Intelligence

Hacking Operations     Cyber and Society

Cryptography     Other topics

The NSA    The Snowden Revelations

Signals Intelligence    Hacking Operations

Cyber and Society    Cryptography

Other topics

 


Books about the NSA

- Michael V. Hayden: Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, Penguin Press, February 2016.

- Matthew M. Aid: The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency, Bloomsbury Press, June 2009 (declassified review by the CIA)

- James Bamford: The Shadow Factory: The Ultra-Secret NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping on America, Doubleday, January 2008.

- James Bamford: Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency, Anchor, 2002.

- James Bamford: The Puzzle Palace: A Report on America's Most Secret Agency, Houghton Mifflin, 1982.
 


Books about the Snowden Revelations

- Barton Gellman: Dark Mirror, Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State, Penguin, May 2020 (documents and cover names)

- Edward Snowden: Permanent Record, MacMillan, September 2019 (review part I - review part II)

- Timothy H. Edgar, Beyond Snowden, Privacy, Mass Surveillance, and the Struggle to Reform the NSA, The Brookings Institution, August 2017.

- Edward Jay Epstein, How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft, Knopf, January 2017.

- Ronald Goldfarb e.a.: After Snowden: Privacy, Secrecy, and Security in the Information Age, May 2015.

- David P. Fidler ed.: The Snowden Reader, Indiana University Press, April 2015 (review)

- Glenn Greenwald: No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State, Metropolitan Books, May 2014 (documents, notes and index)

- Michael Gurnow: The Edward Snowden Affair: Exposing the Politics and Media Behind the NSA Scandal, Blue River Press, April 2014.

- Marcel Rosenbach & Holger Stark: Der NSA-Komplex: Edward Snowden und der Weg in die totale Überwachung, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, March 2014.

- Luke Harding: The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man, Vintage, February 2014.

- Catherine A. Fitzpatrick: Privacy for Me and Not for Thee: The Movement for Invincible Personal Encryption, Radical State Transparency, and the Snowden Hack, January 2014.

- Edward Lucas: The Snowden Operation, Inside the West’s Greatest Intelligence Disaster (e-book), January 2014.
 


Books about GCHQ

- Joel Greenberg: Alastair Denniston: Code-breaking From Room 40 to Berkeley Street and the Birth of GCHQ, Frontline Books, October 2022.

- John Ferris: Behind the Enigma - The Authorised History of GCHQ, Britain’s Secret Cyber-Intelligence Agency, Bloomsbury Publishing, October 2020.

- Richard J. Aldrich: GCHQ, The uncensored story of Britain's most secret intelligence agency, Harper Press, 2010.

 


Books about Signals Intelligence

- John Fahey: The Factory: The Official History of the Australian Signals Directorate, Vol. 1, Allen & Unwin, February 2023.

- John Blaxland & Clare Birgin: Revealing Secrets: An unofficial history of Australian Signals intelligence and the advent of cyber, UNSW Press, May 2023.

- Robert Dover: Hacker, Influencer, Faker, Spy, Hurst Publishers, October 2022

- Chelsea Manning: README.txt - A Memoir, MacMillan, October 2022 (review)

- James R. Clapper: Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence, Penguin Books, May 2018.

- Yasha Levine: Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet, Ingram Publisher Services, October 2017.

- Andrei Soldatov: The Red Web: The Kremlin's Wars on the Internet, Ingram Publisher Services, August 2017.

- Christian Hadan: Die strategische Fernmeldeüberwachung des Bundesnachrichtendienstes, Dissertation Universität Hamburg, June 2017.

- Fred Kaplan: Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, Simon & Schuster, March 2017

- Gordon Corera: Intercept: The Secret History of Computers and Spies, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2015.

- Shane Harris: @War: The Rise of the Military-Internet Complex, Eamon Dolan/Mariner Books, 2015.

- Marc Ambinder & D.B. Grady: Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, Wiley, April 2013.

- Peter Matthews, SIGINT, the secret history of signals intelligence, 1914-45, Stroud: History Press, 2013.

- Dana Priest & William M. Arkin: Top Secret America: The Rise of the New American Security State, Little, Brown and Company, September 2011.

- Shane Harris: The Watchers: The Rise of America's Surveillance State, Penguin Books, January 2011.

- Patrick Radden Keefe: Chatter: Dispatches from the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping, Random House, 2005.

- Matthew M. Aid, Cees Wiebes e.a.: Secrets of Signals Intelligence during the Cold War and beyond, Frank Cass, 2001.

- Nicky Hager: Secret Power, New Zealand’s role in the international spy network, Craig Potton Publishing, 1996.

- Desmond Ball: Soviet Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), The Australian National University, 1989.
 


Books about intelligence cooperation

- Richard Kerbaj: The Secret History of the Five Eyes: The Untold Story of the Shadowy International Spy Network, Through Its Targets, Traitors and Spies, Blink Publishing, September 2022 (review)

- Michael Smith, The Real Special Relationship: The True Story of How the British and US Secret Services Work Together, Simon & Schuster, August 2022.

- Jeffrey T. Richelson & Desmond Ball: The ties that bind: Intelligence cooperation between the UKUSA countries, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, Allen & Unwin, 1985.

 


Books about Hacking operations

- Robert Chesney & Max Smeets (eds): Deter, Disrupt, Deceive: Assessing Cyber Conflict as an Intelligence Contest, May 2023

- Daniel Moore: Offensive Cyber Operations: Understanding Intangible Warfare, Oxford University Press, August 2022.

- Max Smeets: No Shortcuts: Why States Struggle to Develop a Military Cyber-Force, Hurst Publishers, May 2022.

- Ben Buchanan: The Hacker and the State: Cyber Attacks and the New Normal of Geopolitics, Harvard University Press, February 2020.

- Andy Greenberg: Sandworm: A New Era of Cyberwar and the Hunt for the Kremlin's Most Dangerous Hackers, Doubleday, November 2019.

- Kim Zetter: Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of the World's First Digital Weapon, Broadway Books, September 2015.
 


Books about German intelligence

- Gerhard Schindler: Wer hat Angst vorm BND? Warum wir mehr Mut beim Kampf gegen die Bedrohungen unseres Landes brauchen. Eine Streitschrift, Econ, October 2020.

- Christian Hadan: Die strategische Fernmeldeüberwachung des Bundesnachrichtendienstes, Dissertation Universität Hamburg, June 2017.

- Martin Schlüter: Nachts schlafen die Spione – Letzte Ansichten des BND in Pullach, Sieveking Verlag, München 2014.

- Erich Schmidt-Eenboom & Rudolf Lambrecht: BND – Der deutsche Geheimdienst im Nahen Osten, Herbig, München 2006.
 


Books about Dutch intelligence

- Bart Jacobs, Constant Hijzen, Florentijn van Kampen, Rowin Jansen (red): Uiterst vertrouwelijk, Achter de schermen van de Nederlandse geheime diensten, Uitgeverij Querido, April 2024.

- Willemijn Aerdts: Diensten met geheimen. Hoe de AIVD en MIVD Nederland veilig houden, Ambo | Anthos uitgevers, May 2023.

- Bob de Graaff, Ongekend en onderscheidend, De geheime geschiedenis van de MIVD, Boom Uitgevers, November 2022.

- Paul H.A.M. Abels, Spionkoppen, Inlichtingenleiderschap in elf portretten, Uitgeverij Prometheus, 2020.

- Constant Hijzen, Vijandbeelden, De veiligheidsdiensten en de democratie, 1912-1992, Boom uitgevers, 2016.

- Cees Wiebes, Samen met de CIA. Operaties achter het IJzeren Gordijn, Boom uitgevers,2016.

- Frits Hoekstra, De dienst, de BVD van binnenuit, Boom uitgevers, 2012.

- Chris Vos, De geheime dienst: verhalen over de BVD, 2005.

- Dick Engelen, De militaire inlichtingendienst, 1914-2000, Sdu Uitgevers, 2000.
 


Books about Cyber and Society

- Ben Buchanan & Andrew Imbrie: The New Fire: War, Peace, and Democracy in the Age of AI, The MIT Press, March 2022

- Ronald J. Deibert, Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society, House of Anansi Press, October 2020.

- James Ball: The System: Who Owns the Internet, and How It Owns Us, Bloomsbury Publishing, August 2020.

- Shoshana Zuboff: The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, PublicAffairs, January 2019.

- Bruce Schneier: Data and Goliath, The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World, W. W. Norton & Company, March 2015.

- P.W. Singer and Allan Friedman: Cybersecurity and Cyberwar: What Everyone Needs to Know, Oxford University Press, January 2014.

- Ronald J. Deibert: Black Code: Surveillance, Privacy, and the Dark Side of the Internet Paperback, Signal, November 2013.
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Books about Cryptography

- William Easttom: Modern Cryptography: Applied Mathematics for Encryption and Information Security, Springer, December 2020.

- Simon Singh: The Code Book: A History of Cryptography, Doubleday, 1999.

- David Kahn: The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet, Scribner, 1996.

See also: Books on cryptography
 


Other interesting books

- Y(ossi) S(ariel): The Human-Machine Team: How to Create Synergy Between Human & Artificial Intelligence That Will Revolutionize Our World, May 2021.

- William M. Arkin: Code Names: Deciphering U.S. Military Plans, Programs and Operations in the 9/11 World, Steerforth, January 2005.

- Michael K. Bohn, Nerve Center: Inside the White House Situation Room, Brassey's Inc., 2003.



More books will be added gradually!