Permanent Record
2019
- snowden, edward j., 1983-
- government information
- whistle blowing
- leaks (disclosure of information)
- officials and employees
- united states
- united states. national security agency
- biography
- nyt:combined-print-and-e-book-nonfiction=2019-10-06
- electronic surveillance
The story
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 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.
What it’s like
Measured, conversational prose that moves between the glow of a childhood spent online and the hushed, compartmentalized rooms of intelligence work, with the tension of a man describing a system from inside it. The voice is wry and plainspoken, unpretentious about technical detail, and it lingers on suburban ordinariness, on screens and networks, and on the quiet dread of realizing what one's own job makes possible. The mood is contemplative and anxious, closer to a late-night unease than to thriller adrenaline, and the pacing is steady, with long reflective stretches broken by sharper moments of decision. Its emotional arc is a conscience slowly hardening into action, and its people are seen mostly through the narrator's doubt and loyalty. Intensity is low on graphic content: there is no gore and little physical violence, though the stakes are existential and the threat of state retaliation hangs over every chapter. It suits a long read on a slow weekend, or a reflective commute, and is best for readers who want a thoughtful, morally weighted memoir about privacy, power, and technology rather than a fast-paced spy story.
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