When it came out in late 2012, Cypherpunks may have seemed like a book ahead of its times. After all, even six months ago, how many in the world had heard about the PRISM worldwide surveillance programme of the US National Security Agency (NSA)? Or about Boundless Informant? Or that India was one of the top five countries monitored extensively by the NSA? Or that Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, and several other tech companies shared user data that were supposed to remain private? But a few weeks ago a man named Edward Snowden confirmed to the world that the “surveillance dystopia” Assange had warned “may already be there” is, in fact, already here.

Read the whole article at LiveMint

.