Latest Reading - Permanent Record by Ed Snowden

I recently finished the autobiography by the infamous American whistler blower and I loved it. Though it was short, I thought it was a great read that helped lend some insight into Ed’s motivations as well as give a good background on who he is. Not to mention any technical topics brought up in the book were easily broken down into an explanation that anyone could understand.

Quotes from the book

I tend to highlight passages from books that I like, find interesting, or are noteworthy. Below are a few that I highlighted.

A decade later, it had become clear, to me at least, that the repeated evocations of terror by the political class were not a response to any specific threat or concern but a cynical attempt to turn terror into a permanent danger that required permanent vigilance enforced by unquestionable authority.

Authoritarian states are typically not governments of laws, but governments of leaders, who demand loyalty from their subjects and are hostile to dissent.

Ultimately, saying you don’t care about your privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don’t care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.

A “whistleblower” in my definition, is a person who through hard experience has concluded that their life inside an institution has become incompatible with the principles developed in, and the loyalty owed to - the greater society outside it, to which that institution should be accountable.

For this reason, encryption is the single best hope for fighting surveillance of any kind.

It’s pretty fucked up that a person who reports the illegal actions of the government is the criminal and not the institution committing the crimes. What peaceful recourse is there for the citizens when that have been lied to repeatedly and when the truth has been hidden from them? He did what he could to censor the content (I certainly trust journalists more than the government)

I definitely recommend checking out the book - I intend to buy a copy for my work ‘library’ as well as having a hard cover copy on the shelf.