As widely reported -- here, for example, in USA Today -- Sales of '1984' spike amid NSA spying scandal.
In the Neue Zürcher Zeitung Matthias Hennig argues [in German] that Stanisław Lem, in his 1961 novel Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, saw all this coming, and that that is the more appropriate novel to turn to; get your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.
It's a solid argument -- indeed, I'm surprised Lem isn't much more widely read generally, since few have thought as well about the future (and the implications of technology) as him.
(In the September issue of Harper's American author William T. Vollmann reports on looking into his FBI file (as much as they'd let him see, anyway ...), in Life as a Terrorist [full article only available to subscribers], finding that for a while they even suspected him of being the 'Unabomber' (see, for example, Ron Charles' post at The Washington Post's The Style Blog), suggesting that incompetence at dealing with 'intelligence' remains par for the course for the government -- and that citizens should be very worried indeed about the new powers and the new abilities for so-called intelligence-gathering that have been widely adopted. It does not bode well. Not well at all.)
(In the September issue of Harper's American author William T. Vollmann reports on looking into his FBI file (as much as they'd let him see, anyway ...), in Life as a Terrorist [full article only available to subscribers], finding that for a while they even suspected him of being the 'Unabomber' (see, for example, Ron Charles' post at The Washington Post's The Style Blog), suggesting that incompetence at dealing with 'intelligence' remains par for the course for the government -- and that citizens should be very worried indeed about the new powers and the new abilities for so-called intelligence-gathering that have been widely adopted. It does not bode well. Not well at all.)