Permanent Record

By: Edward Snowden

Narrated by: Holter Graham

An NPR Best Book of the Year - 2019

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, 29-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the 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.

©2019 Edward Snowden (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Great (if incomplete) account

I don't agree with everything Snowden did, and I don't know how complete this book is about his motivations and actions, but even with those caveats, it's an excellent book.

The most interesting aspect for me was not the factual description of what he did (although there are some never-before-read details), but his mindset and motivation to choose to betray the NDAs and chain of command while (possibly) honoring the oath of service. The technical details about his archiving system (it basically crawled a bunch of the published-within-IC sources and then indexed them, republishing for internal use, which allowed him perfect cover for exfiltration...) were still interesting, of course. That NSA had incredibly lax internal security and compartmentalization in the 1993-2013 period (due to losing all the cold war people and replacing them with...a specific demographic profile), CIA and State's technical incompetence, etc. are all pretty well supported by evidence. (Incidentally, the technical jack of all trades at CIA job sounds pretty amazing.)

Least expected angle was just how impressive his wife is. NSA's initial angle was "stripper", which brings a whole set of assumptions. However, this was pretty clearly inaccurate -- she's an intelligent and thoughtful person (although not involved in Snowden's exfiltration of data or escape), and based on actions since the incident (moving to Russia, marrying Snowden a year later, ...), seems

His descriptions of contracting culture and the gov/contractor split, hypertrophy and metastasis of the IC and contractors, etc all are strongly supported by evidence (and my personal experience as a contractor with the government for several years).

What is missing, and calls into question the veracity of the whole account, is the exact process of deciding to do all of this. In the book, it was that he accidentally saw a STLW (Stellar Wind) document, related to one of the most morally and legally questionable programs post-Church conducted by the USG (and for which individuals should be prosecuted and likely hanged), then just started searching for and consuming information for his own education (to see if these programs really existed), and only then decided to leak. That's possible, but it's not strongly supported. The mysterious occurrence of epilepsy around this time which motivated him to spend time on self-reflection and switching to a role with less of everything except access to this data, etc. seems a bit too convenient. This is the one area where I'm still a bit suspicious of the whole affair (either that an external power was involved, or that other NSA insiders supported him), but the story as told could also be the truth -- it's just difficult or impossible to validate.

Overall, one of the best books about the complex and evolving interplay between young, relatively powerless individuals who have technical competence and thus effective technical control over large institutions like government vs. the official power structures, the failures of USG/IC, and one of the biggest news stories in civil liberties since the 1970s.

hi, government guy watching 👋

excellent story, not what I thought It would be, definitely better, more insightful than expected

A MUST READ!! How we lost our privacy after 9/11

An American hero describes the decades long corruption of all three branches of the U. S. government and the ongoing "War on Whistle Blowers"

Excellent Well written and explained.

I really appreciated that the book was not written as some manifesto but more of a here is the facts from Edward Snowden’s side. The book does not try to persuade you to side with him but gives you the story and the facts in clear and precise way. It has opened my eyes to his story.

Permanent Comment

Great listen I wonder sometimes why not enough people keep an open mind on certain Zeros and Ones and so on.

Wow.

Wow. This man, and all the people who helped him and loved him and believed him...thank you.

Principled American Hero

Very seldom does one rest on their principles and their desire of constitutional freedom and Liberty for all... Edward Snowden risked his life to inform the public of mass surveillance....A truly selfless and admirable act and a great story!

A dose of reality about our privacy.

This book materializes what we already know in some way and we prefer don't think about it, we decide to look the other way, we do not want to take responsibility for our right, for our privacy in hands of the governments around the world.

For public good

A true inspiring essay of our digital Life challenges where the individual contrast institutions.

Dismantling the ugly faces of overreaching authorities who violate our foundation human rights...

chilling and captivating

If you care at all about your privacy (what's left of it anyway,) you need to read this book. What Mr. Snowden did wasn't a betrayal of his country, it was heroic.