By [Edward Snowden] Permanent Record (Paperback) 2019 Paperback

Edward Snowden is an exceptionally polarizing person. Some view him as a hero. Others view him as a traitor to our country. These two positions exist in my own household and are defended vehemently.I view him as a hero, a man who gave up life as he lived it to provide the American public and the world with the truth. This is a man who truly made a difference with his life.This book, written by Snowden himself, is well written, intelligent, informative, and entertaining. It reads like you're sitting down listening to your best friend tell his life's story.

Firstly, I'm an admirer of Snowden and think what he did was a great service to the whole world. His book, not so much. Snowden is not a professional writer and it shows. Snowden is at his best when writing technical journals and less so when writing prose. I thought that his attempts at humor mostly fell flat. The first 82 pages recounted his unremarkable childhood which was little different than yours or mine which to me anyway was a bit boring, just like ours. A good editor could have shrunk this to less than 25 pages. Chapter #9, "X-Ray", was about his time in boot camp which anyone who has ever gone through boot camp would recognize and it was well-done. The book started to come alive in Part Two and had me hooked by chapter #13, "Indoc".. By the time Snowden got to the actual workings of the NSA, CIA, and all of their subcontractors and how the system works I couldn't put the book down. My copy came on Weds and I read through the night and finished it today (Thurs) Had I just the first 80 pages I would have rated the book 2 stars or the final 250 pages, 4 stars.. I think 3.5 would be fair but Amazon doesn't allow us to split stars.. I think Snowden's editor failed him..I

This is a story that must. reach the heart of America . True evil loves to take the form of patriotism and religion as our current Trump administration revealed. The Snowden family has proved for generations their values.

Snowden is clearly a brilliant and deep thinker. I had no idea his prose would be so delightful to read. He has an engaging storytelling meter and a gift for pleasing alliteration.

“And the geek shall inherit the earth...” Nicely done autobiographical work from one of the most important historical figures of the 21st century. No matter what your opinion may be of him, it’s a necessary and compelling read.

Edward Snowden is a hero, it's never been right that big brother in the White House is performing mass surveillance activities and such, it brings into question the integrity of the top officials in the white house. Why didnt they tell us these surveillance programs were so extensive? What else aren't they telling us? What are they hiding? We deserve the right to know and its just a matter of time before people really start taking a stand for their privacy. The government is corrupt and we need a new system because apparently this one doesn't work.

He's not wrong about data and privacy, but jesus if this isn't the worst book i've ever read. A not-at-all-veiled appeal to the public to be regarded as a hero of high moral character. Very little actual content and information. Immature. Self-Righteous. Reminds me of an insufferable Dexter monologue. Read half of it. Wish I hadn't bought it.

A must read book. A historical waypoint. I couldn't recommend it more. I doubt this genie can or should be put back in the bottle. There are multiple ways of looking at this topic. Ultimately I don't think he should serve any time in prison since it was important to share the implications of modern computing with respect to privacy. In general if I had to choose between total transparency and total privacy, I'd choose total transparency in all things. Ultimately you can't reverse technological change very easily without destroying society itself. Crazy Ted Kaczynski worried about the same types of negatives coming from technological change and thought it was worth destroying society in an attempt to reboot the technological change that he saw as ultimately destroying society anyway. I think it was very important to get the information Ed shared out to the broader public, but now what? If I had one question to ask Ed it would be: "what is your wish list of solutions to the valid concerns you raise?" There aren't any major solutions. We're all on the same ride and it only goes forward. We can at best hope to regulate and dull the negatives while embracing the positives of technological change. You can't put the genie back in the bottle easily without causing major societal damage. Curiosity and technical innovation are something that are wound into the very evolution of our human design. It can't be avoided and it takes us relentlessly forward to destinations unknown regardless of our concerns about our innate inner impulse. During the Middle Ages the church tried to stop innovation but it didn't last long. Then we got the Enlightenment

This has been a riveting read. I fell straight into the "I'll just read one more chapter, then I'll get back to work..." trap.Obviously the initial pull to read the book is the NSA stuff, and the great chase which culminates in Snowden's refuge in Russia. But the book is so much more than that. His recounting of his childhood, and the joys of dial-up modems and irritating siblings, is wonderful nostalgia but always laced with his discomfort and struggle with the social structures around him.The book's natural progression of explaining how the internet has changed in function, as he lived through those changes, unrolls as a beautifully written discussion of how we've reached the state of the Net we have today. It's easily light enough for non-techies to understand, but the insight and narration really opens up the questions of what we (society) demanded of the internet, and what it's done to us.The book doesn't meander. There's no padding. But by the time you reach the releasing of the files and the round the world escape, it's very natural. Reading it, the chase is as engrossing to read as his thoughts on the Commodore 64. It's a great book, perhaps made all the greater if you can nod along with remembrances of life before 24/7 smartphones. Above all, it's hopeful of a better future.(Couple of notes as a UK reader: The book is written in universal English, there's no bewildering US slang used. The book doesn't go into American politics or deep into American terms. There are a couple of pages of US history, mainly early on about Snowden's family tree, but it's not a diversion. It doesn't read like an American book, aimed at American readers, and leaving everyone else bewildered.)

As an expert in the information technology industry. If transparency is what your are seeking then this book is all you need. A full deep dive into the life of a normal person who has been branded as this villain. Why not find out directly from the person. Very well written and highly recommended

Unlike Edward Snowden, I don’t accept axiomatically that it’s wrong for a well-meaning government to collect my data. Rather, I hold that belief for some of the same reasons I don’t like the death penalty: first, I don’t want to have to trust my government with infallibility; second, it freaks me out that, once it’s established the government can do it, the private sector might get a look-in (which for data it already does, of course; possession is nine tenths of the law)Either way, there’s no doubt in my mind that Edward Snowden will one day be recognised as an American hero. He has the Constitution firmly on his side, besides.“No Place to Hide” I read as soon as it came out, and I even caught the Oliver Stone movie on the plane, but horse’s mouth turns out to be better than both.My first reaction when I read the Greenwald book was “omigod, a 29-year-old with no college education can look up all data on the planet; the Russians must have their pick from 10,000 underpaid Federal agents to find out anything they want” and as the CIA went on to lose all its agents in China I allowed myself to think we might come to our senses and turn the whole thing off.I was wrong on all counts, it turns out. First of all, duh, we ain’t turning it off. But the better part of the story, the one I came to appreciate by reading “Permanent Record,” (and yes, I know, the movie made the same point, but not as well, so I did not “buy” it) is that Edward Snowden is a rather unique guy.So yeah, it’s true he had clearance to look at all information ever created on planet Earth, and it’s true he never went to college, but somebody’s got to have the clearance and you could not want for a better candidate: leaving his undisputed technical skills to one side, he’s Mayflower stock, his parents both served in the intelligence community, he wrote to the CIA as a kid to tell them he’d hacked their website, he enlisted as a private after 9-11 and, hell, he’s a patriot.So I’m relieved. And I was entertained. His life may not have been remarkable or exciting, but you’re invited to find out about it through the eyes of a kid that loves to examine everything and hack everything and loves to brag about how he did it (a quality he sees in others but fails to identify in himself, incidentally).Bottom line, the book would be worth reading even if it wasn’t about the whistleblower who uncovered the biggest and most unconstitutional government secret of the past half-century.Except it is, and that makes it a total must-read.Come on Elizabeth Warren, pardon the man. I really hope his chances are better than he intimates on page 271!

What an excellent memoir by Snowden. This is my 3rd book I read in my entire life. Incredible Valor. Cannot imagine what he is going through for the sacrifices he made and yet the govt which he hoped will be held accountable still continue to do the things he exposed with impunity. Reading this book makes me think that Snowden was mostly let down by people not standing up for him. The book reveals how much he tried to raise this issue within the NSA and why he chose to go to Journalists atlast. If govt (& their propagandists) call him puppet, make no mistake that implies people are Enemies.

As I close my Kindle -- perhaps sending some signals to Amazon's servers, and the various secret services surveilling it -- I'm deeply touched by this book, and think to how I first came across Snowden. It was after the NSA's schemes were made public, but before his name was revealed. Following Glenn Greenwald and his immensely interesting Guardian journalism, I had deciced to donate money to Glenn's partly crowd-financed endeavours. To my surprise, shortly thereafter, my Mastercard was blocked, without me ever learning the reason. To this day I don't know if it was a random fluke (it never happened before, or since), or a sign of the Secret Powers That Be in action. But maybe that's the dark beauty of the Chilling Effect -- whether or not we are observed, we surely feel like it, and we may consciously and sub-consciously adjust our actions.This book is an important masterpiece. We already knew Ed was extremely brave and extremely smart. Now we also know he's an extremely good writer. The words flow on the page with conciseness and emotion, and it's hard to put the book down once started. I can only imagine how many future whistleblowers it might inspire. How many tech experts it makes stop and think, "What am I doing? And who am I doing it for?"But maybe we shouldn't be too surprised. The type of principled stand Ed took is deeply rooted not just in love, but also a humanist background. He had his head on screwed right before society's more evil parts could corrupt his wallet and make it think for him, as it often does.This book is currently under attack by the US government. They try to sue to get his royalties. We always worry about the Chinese credit system ranking and blocking humans (as we should), but somewhat more rarely do we worry about how the financial system itself can be used to block us. (Incidentally, Ed's credit cards have been blocked too, as he's living his life in exile.) But to give back to Ed's sacrifice, perhaps money isn't even that important. Making his sacrifice not have been in vein is.I do wonder if technology's progress can ever be stopped, though, in a kind of "Curb the company's reach for power through laws" type of ways. And then I wonder if delving even more deeply into that progress may instead be the answer -- to have counter-technology to recreate a power balance. One the one hand, by evolving tools that better encrypt our communication (or would I just become a higher-priority target by installing Ed's suggested messenger, Signal? Ah, the Chilling Effect!). On the other hand, by perhaps increasing transparency -- surveillance? -- of the secret services themselves. Would the intelligence worker, crouching over their latest iteration of XKEYSCORE or another illegal spying program, perform the same searches if they themselves had a camera on them -- watched by millions across the globe, shining light into the darkest corners of the tech cave?Thank you, Ed, for doing just that -- shining light. May you and your wife and friends live a happy life in exile. My own country, Germany, was too cowardly to consider a safe harbor for you. But know you have the support from many of us citizens here. Love & peace!