Permanent Record

I thought I knew the scale of the surveillance that the NSA (the National Security Agency, a premier American intelligence agency) was conducting on its citizens (and through various alliances, any Web traffic that passed through its borders) - but to read about it in its full and chilling detail is astounding.
To give a brief background, Edward Snowden is famous (or depending upon your views on whistleblowers, infamous) for leaking, in explicit detail, how the US had built a massive surveillance program to spy on its own citizens, in the guise of ‘protecting the country from terrorists'. To put it simply, anyone who was deemed even slightly suspicious had a ‘marker' placed upon them (for example, a professor who applied for tenure in a university in Iran). This marker meant that everything - where you eat, where you go, who you meet with - was tracked. This was not even the most chilling fact - the cherry on the cake was the fact that everything that was tracked was permanently stored, and the aforementioned marker could be placed even if the person ‘could be suspected in the future' - hence the title of the memoir, ‘Permanent Record'.
Naturally, these revelations performed a furore. The United States revoked his passport midair, while he was enroute to Ecuador, where he was offered asylum. He has been in forced exile in Russia since he landed in the airport, in June 2013.
In the memoir, though, Snowden details how he became interested in programming, how he became a defense contractor working for various intelligence agencies, and why he actually became a whistelblower. Even putting aside the unsettling nature of the disclosures, this is a riveting read on its own, as Snowden details his own life in vivid detail, and how his experiences shaped him. A must read if you're curious about cybersecurity, privacy, or just in the mood of rich memoirs.

I have worked in and around the IT industry for over 15 years and grew up, similarly to Snowden, enamored with technology. I got my first PC, a XT clone, at around age 10 and started running my own BBS shortly after. I remember those first days of the internet, my first website, and the days before social media. None of what he exposed in 2013 really surprised me or people like me - at least not from a technological perspective. It was always an assumption that this stuff could happen. Taking over cameras, stepping through backdoors in routers, listening in on microphones, browsing private social media pages. Of course that's possible. What we didn't fully appreciate was the scope. The story Edward Snowden has to tell is an important one... and the book covers his life and the events surrounding his whistleblowing with great detail and emotion. It not only explains what he did, but he tries to tell the story of why he did it. It's a wonderfully crafted book that should be standard reading for any technologist.

That the US government is collecting data on such an enormous scale, passively, and storing it in perpetuity... that should frighten everyone, and it's enough to start making you paranoid of the things you do online. Of course, I'm just a middle aged white guy in Canada who lives a fairly standard, boring life. I'm not a juicy surveillance target. Or am I?

Hello?

...are you reading this?

Hello?

Un témoignage passionnant du lanceur d'alerte Edward Snowden, qui a révélé au monde entier le programme illégal et anticonstitutionnel de surveillance de masse de la NSA cautionné par le gouvernement américain.

Les premiers chapitres m'ont fait penser à Aaron Schwartz, avec cette passion pour l'informatique et cette découverte enthousiasmante de l'Internet des années 1990, quand cet outil laissait espérer une utopie technologique au service du savoir et du partage.

La suite est évidemment plus sombre, avec cette plongée dans les coulisses de la CIA et de la NSA et leurs contingents de sous-traitants, faisant du renseignement américain un terrain de jeu géant et une poule aux œufs d'or pour des compagnies privées.

L'exil d'Edward Snowden à Hong Kong puis à Moscou, après avoir révélé au public les agissements de la NSA et du gouvernement américain, clôture ce récit qui serait incroyable et semblerait tiré d'un roman d'espionnage si nous ne savions pas qu'il s'agit de la réalité.

Ce n'est pas forcément une grande œuvre littéraire sur la forme, quoique j'ai été surpris par la qualité de l'écriture et par une dose d'humour bien senti, mais c'est un livre captivant et utile.