Everyone has a story.
Even mild-mannered whistle blowers with an usually short fuse for acts of illegal surveillance.
SNOWDEN proves this in a recently released memoir titled, ‘Permanent Records.’
His views about his world-shaking, far-reaching controversial reveal, remains unchanged.
“Whereas other spies have committed espionage, sedition and treason,” he writes, “ I would be aiding and abetting an act of journalism.”
“Permanent Record” weaves together personal intel and spycraft info, much of it technologically elaborate yet clearly explained. You’ll also learn that even in our fragmented era, the tools of mass surveillance have revealed one thing that seems to connect almost everyone who’s online: porn.
“This was true for virtually everyone of every gender, ethnicity, race and age,” Snowden writes, “from the meanest terrorist to the nicest senior citizen, who might be the meanest terrorist’s grandparent, or parent, or cousin.”
This is funny, but it’s ominous, too. Without belaboring his points, Snowden pushes the reader to reflect more seriously on what every American should be asking already. What does it mean to have the data of our lives collected and stored on file, ready to be accessed — not just now, by whatever administration happens to be in office at the moment, but potentially forever?
Snowden doesn’t reveal too much about his life in exile. He and Lindsay have since married, renting a two-bedroom apartment in Moscow, where he beams out his image through a screen-on-wheels, nicknamed the “Snowbot,” giving talks about privacy to audiences around the world.
He says he takes care to avoid being recognized in public — “but nowadays everybody’s too busy staring at their phones to give me a second glance.”
Source: The NewYork Times
Image: The same
