As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

"Permanent Record" by Edward Snowden

book review by Riley Burnham 10/11/2022

oh my goodness, what a thoroughly good & worthwhile book

this pretty much gives the inside view of the spying programs enacted by US agencies [to wit of the author], & his journey & reasoning for exposing this to the public via journalists

it's a great refresher/course on basic technological security [encryption for instance], & shows how easily & variously our lives are & can be tracked; saved into a repository as a "permanent record" that can be sifted through

he talks about tools that allow humans to surveil folks in real-time [or retroactively], gaining access to their device screens, cameras, microphones, etc.

he talks about employees intercepting & showing one-another nudes & other otherwise private photos/documents of individuals -- noting that virtually every single person exhibits behavior like: watching or having watched porn, & stores albums w/ family photos -- emphasizing that these are ubiquitous traits

​​​​​​​he notes that agencies can & do use their surveilled resources to disparage or publicly demean people -- including planting false or semi-false attributes to further their cause [exploiting people & sabotaging reputations]

the end is quite beautiful as he's living exiled in Moscow, visited by his girlfriend who he marries a year after her arrival