This is award-winning Washington Post journalist Robert O’Harrow Jr.’s first book and is yet another post-9/11 American homeland security epic. These tend to divide into two camps, those who advocate a largely unquestioning move toward more intensive security to combat the threat of terrorism (e.g., Safir and Whitman 2003) and those who question the headlong rush to more intrusive surveillance and tighter restrictions on traditional freedoms (e.g., Parenti 2003; Rosen 2004). The cover boasts of the author’s ‘unrivaled access’ and years of experience, so I was hoping for a truly incisive and well-written but accessible book on the rise of the surveillance society. It is good, but it is not quite the definitive guide.