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Permanent Record

Edward Snowden leaked classified documents about the U.S. government's mass surveillance programs in 2013. The leaks revealed that the NSA was collecting phone records and internet data from American citizens, beyond just individuals of interest. Snowden was charged with espionage and stranded in Russia, where he has been living in exile. The autobiography details Snowden's background and how he initially supported intelligence work before realizing the extent of the government's bulk data collection, which led him to become a whistleblower. It also discusses his life in exile in Moscow and his continued advocacy for privacy rights.

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931 views2 pages

Permanent Record

Edward Snowden leaked classified documents about the U.S. government's mass surveillance programs in 2013. The leaks revealed that the NSA was collecting phone records and internet data from American citizens, beyond just individuals of interest. Snowden was charged with espionage and stranded in Russia, where he has been living in exile. The autobiography details Snowden's background and how he initially supported intelligence work before realizing the extent of the government's bulk data collection, which led him to become a whistleblower. It also discusses his life in exile in Moscow and his continued advocacy for privacy rights.

Uploaded by

Mamatti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Permanent Record

Snowden is a former intelligence contractor who, in 2013, leaked documents


about the United States government’s surveillance programs, which were
supposedly limited to specific people of interest. But technological change
made way for new tools for mass surveillance and the incentive to use them.

Sweeping up phone records of American citizens, harvesting data from internet


activity: For revealing these secret programs and more, Snowden was deemed
a traitor by the Obama administration, which charged him with high
treason and revoked his passport, effectively stranding Snowden in Moscow,
where he has been living ever since.

Born in 1983 in North Carolina, Snowden comes from a family whose members
have served in the F.B.I, the Coast Guard, the N.S.A., and the Army. He
remembers the first thing he ever hacked was his bedtime, changing all the
clocks in the house so that he could stay up later. As a teenager, Snowden
learned how to hack school, making himself do the least amount of work.

He says that school is at best a distraction, and at worst “an illegitimate


system”. So he spens all his time on the liberating new invention The Internet.

Traumatised by 9/11, Snowden turnes his technical knowedge into a career in


intelligence, obtaining a top-secret clearance at the age of 22, while being
tricked into helping the CIA develop their mass surveillance tools. At first he is
in full support of this. He makes huge contributions to the project, thinking
that he is helping the nation. He later learnes that the government is pursuing
“bulk collection” —collecting all data from Americans’ internet
communications.

Snowden endes up in a Hong Kong hotel room in the summer of 2013, turning
over a trove of classified documents to Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian and
Barton Gellman of The Washington. He emphasises that he is commiting an
act of journalism and sending a clear message, unlike others attempting his
actions.

In the end of the book, Snowden pushes the reader to reflect more seriously on
what every person should be asking already. What does it mean to have the
data of our lives collected and stored on file, ready to be accessed — not just
now, but potentially forever?

Snowden doesn’t reveal too much about his life in exile. He and his wife have
since married, living in Moscow, where he gives talks about privacy to
audiences around the world. He says he takes care to avoid being recognised in
public — but nowadays everybody’s too busy staring at their phones to even
take a look at him.

I really enjoyed the autobiography Permanent Record. I loved the way in which
Snowden depicts with great detail the change in his character and believes – how he
quickly turns from a government puppet to a justice seeker and most importantly –
The Voice of the People.

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