'Permanent Record' by Edward Snowden

Permanent Record, Edward Snowden (4.0)

Already a fan of what Edward Snowden unveiled for us based on the award winning documentary, ‘Citizen Four’, I didn’t expect to be more impressed. Until reading this book, I hadn’t realized the breadth of experiences he had and the extent to which he had gone, prior to meeting with journalists to verify his assumptions and keep his family isolated from his actions. While the movie focuses on his meeting with the journalists in Hong Kong and the days after, the book spends more time on his background and life up until he contacts the journalists. His own words describe the path that led him to become the most famous whistleblower in our history. I appreciated how he described his aptness for the role: he had enough exposure to understand the abuse and was young enough to be idealistic about our country. I also recommend reading this in order to understand the extent and power of our technology. He has a simple, clear way of explaining concepts (e.g. how nothing is actually deleted with ‘memory’, it’s written over). While he obviously paints himself in the best possible light, I believe history will eventually remember him as a hero.