Electronic surveillance

Journalist Jon Fasman says local police are frequently able to access very powerful surveillance tools — including publicly accessible CCTV cameras, automatic license plate readers and cell phone tracking devices — with little oversight. Fasman embedded with different police departments across the country to see how officers integrate technology into their day-to-day job.

Kai Strittmatter's new book, We Have Been Harmonized: Life in China's Surveillance State, examines the role of surveillance in China's authoritarian state. He warns that Chinese President Xi Jinping, who came to power in 2012, has embraced an ideological rigidity unknown since the days of Mao Zedong.

In a new book, Dark Mirror, Barton Gellman writes about his relationship with Edward Snowden and the high-stakes reporting that ultimately garnered him, Poitras and Greenwald a Pulitzer Prize.

Journalist Robert Draper writes in National Geographic that the proliferation of cameras focused on the public has led "to the point where we're expecting to be voyeur and exhibitionist 24/7."

In the book @War, Shane Harris reports that U.S. intelligence agencies, sometimes aided by corporations, are trying to dominate cyberspace. It's "changing the Internet in fundamental ways," he says.

PBS looks at the origins of the agency's surveillance program and the extraordinary steps top government officials took to give it legal cover and keep it hidden.

In Dragnet Nation, Julia Angwin describes an oppressive blanket of electronic data surveillance. "There's a price you pay for living in the modern world," she says. "You have to share your data."

Today's Internet users have become accustomed to stories of hacking, identity theft and cyberattacks, but there was a time when the freedom and anonymity of the Web were new, and no one was sure what rules — if any — applied to its use.

Whether it's logs of phone calls or GPS data, commentator Geoff Nunberg says it still says a lot about who you are: "Tell me where you've been and who you've been talking to, and I'll tell you about your politics, your health, your sexual orientation, your finances," he says.