Intercept: The Secret History of Computers and Spies - Hardcover

Riveting ... Making use of excellent sources, Corera, the BBC's security correspondent, has produced a highly relevant read that addresses the key debate in intelligence gathering - the balance between privacy and security (Stephen Dorril THE SUNDAY TIMES)

If you are looking for a clear and comprehensive guide to how communications have been intercepted, from cable-cutting in the First World War to bulk data collection exposed by Ed Snowden, this is it ... A most readable account of how computers and the internet have transformed spying (Richard Norton-Taylor GUARDIAN)

What good timing for [this] book ... Gordon Corera's book takes us through the labyrinth of cyber-espionage ... It concerns a psychosis of control, whereby the digitisation of spying infests every cranny of our lives (Ed Vulliamy OBSERVER)

Bleakly entertaining ... The lesson of INTERCEPT is that secret information is power, and that there is no end to the struggle to capture it and control it (Richard Walker CapX)

Gordon Corera, best known as the security correspondent for BBC News, somehow finds time to write authoritative, well-researched and readable books on intelligence. Here he explores the evolution of computers from what used to be called signals intelligence to their transforming role in today's intelligence world. The result is an informative, balanced and revealing survey of the field in which, I suspect, most experts will find something new (Alan Judd SPECTATOR)

Never mind all those cold-war thrillers set in 1970s Berlin. The true golden age of spying and surveillance - whether carried out by states or, increasingly, by companies - is now (ECONOMIST)