NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment … American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.
Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online–a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.
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I seem to be on a nonfiction kick here. I had only vague memories of the Snowden scandal from 2013, so I had no expectations about this book. In truth, I wasn’t certain it would appeal to me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Assuming he wrote it (and it wasn’t ghosted), he is amazingly talented. Permanent Record grabbed my attention from the first chapter and didn’t let up. It is poignant and gut wrenching.
Mr. Snowden is a true martyr. Granted he was young and idealistic, but he had a full understanding there would be severe consequences once he came forward. He put patriotism over self, and I applaud his actions. Because of him, many things in the digital world changed and we became less vulnerable to agencies like the NSA knowing everything about us without our knowledge or prior consent.
Whether you approve of Snowden or not, I consider his book worth reading.
On most issues of public concern today, it’s wise not to take at face value what one finds in the news media. It’s best to seek out primary sources. Which is why I urge anyone with an interest in mass surveillance, privacy rights, counterterrorism and national security to read Snowden’s memoir, PERMANENT RECORD.
While the early autobiographical chapters are long and unexciting, they give a clear picture of Snowden as a relatively normal kid who lacked direction until he discovered his talent with computers. Far from growing up in some closeted liberal enclave, his forebears served in the military and he lived among many employed in the NSA, including his mother. Early in his career, Snowden enlisted in the U.S. Army Special Forces Reserve but was discharged after breaking both legs in a training accident.
Snowden’s account of his formative experiences with computers reads like an informal history of the Internet. An unexpected benefit of this part of his story is his account of how the public-spirited mindset of early Internet users devolved into today’s Internet trolls and social media manipulation.
In the book’s second half, PERMANENT RECORD does an excellent job of explaining the rise of U.S. technical intelligence collection and the culture at NSA and CIA and its private tech contractors. In my view, Snowden explains the intricacies of technical collection quite well. He also has much of value to say about how the intelligence community grew beyond its justifiable limits through the rapidly-expanding use of contractors, in turn fed by unlimited budgets and toothless Congressional and White House oversight.
The core of the book, however, discusses his discovery of the deceits and abuses underlying the NSA’s mass surveillance operations. Here Snowden lays out the nature and extent of the abuses, what he thought about them, and how he decided to go about disclosing them. I happen to believe that this is an honest and sincere account of his motives, but I suggest you read the book and form your own opinion.
To my mind, Snowden’s is an honest and relatively well-written memoir that seems more credible to me because Snowden is not a professional writer and refused to work with a ghostwriter. Throughout the book, Snowden comes across to me as human and—dare I say it—reasonable. If you question this, I suggest you watch either of the two Snowden documentary films, CITIZENFOUR or SNOWDEN. Did you know that the documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras started filming (at Snowden’s invitation) the moment he appeared at Glenn Greenwald’s hotel room in Hong Kong? Snowden’s memoir does not differ in any material respect from what you see him do in those two films, and his story has remained consistent throughout many interviews.
As for Snowden’s alleged crimes, I’m of two minds. My dominant thought is that America needed somebody with direct access to the NSA bulk intelligence collection program to blow the lid off it. If I were on Snowden’s jury today in a trial for his unauthorized disclosures, I’d likely vote to acquit. And if such abuses continue, or recur after the furor subsides, I hope another Snowden comes forward to blow the whistle again.
In the end, what Snowden disclosed, and what he describes in PERMANENT RECORD, isn’t very far from what respected NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake have been saying for years. Binney and Drake were largely ignored by the public until now. Snowden shouldn’t be.
Nowadays, my reading of the U.S. counterterrorist effort is that the FBI and local law enforcement have terrorist wannabes pretty well covered. Many of the FBI’s arrests and convictions since 9/11 appear to be based on informant operations that come perilously close to entrapment. With today’s level of counterterrorism vigilance, if you or I were to say something terroristic after downing a drink or two, the next day the person sitting on the barstool beside us might turn out to be an FBI stool pigeon.
My own view is that Americans have gone too far in allowing fears of terrorism to justify the loss of our Constitutionally guaranteed freedoms to privacy and free speech. I believe that electronic surveillance on U.S. citizens should still require a showing of probable cause and a court order. If NSA can collect everything on everybody, and store it forever, the government will be tempted to use that info against whoever it doesn’t happen to like at the moment. And those who are least likable to the national security zealots are those of us who think independently and don’t believe everything we’re told.
One last comment from personal experience: having served at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War, I probably worry less than most Americans about terror attacks on U.S. soil. I think of it this way: America is a huge country. Though murder on any scale is abominable, this vast nation is capable of shrugging off all manner of terror attacks. Even in 1970s-1980s Beirut, war and terrorism had a limited reach. Street life resumed even as the broken glass was being swept up. If you heard gunfire but the battle wasn’t being fought on your block, you kept going about your business. Terrorism did not stop people from going to Beirut’s cinemas, restaurants, sports events, and shops back then. Nor will it stop me now.
Should be a mandatory high school civics text.
Edward Snowden. realized the technology he loved was collecting info Used to manipulate our spending habits , elections and create fake newsHis whistleblowing opens our eyes to the importance of using encryption methods to protect our privacy and data .An eye – opening work we should all read the next time we go online .
Every American should read this book.