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Permanent Record Audio CD – Unabridged, September 17, 2019

4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 16,938 ratings

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Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down.

In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.

Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood,
Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online―a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

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Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.

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About the Author

Edward Snowden was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and grew up in the shadow of Fort Meade. A systems engineer by training, he served as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency. He has received numerous awards for his public service, including the Right Livelihood Award, the German Whistleblower Prize, the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, and the Carl von Ossietzky Medal from the International League of Human Rights. Currently, he serves as president of the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

Holter Graham, winner of AudioFile’s 2008 Best Voice in Science Fiction & Fantasy for Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Acheron, is a stage, television, and screen actor. He has recorded numerous audiobooks, including much of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s bestselling Dark-Hunter series. The winner of multiple AudioFile Earphones Awards, he has also read works by Scott Turow, Dean Koontz, C. J. Box, and Stephen Frey.

 His film credits include
Fly Away Home, Maximum Overdrive, Hairspray, and The Diversion, a short film which he acted in and produced. On television, he has appeared in Army Wives, Damages, As The World Turns, Rescue Me, Law & Order and New York Undercover. He received a B.A. from Skidmore College and an M.F.A. from Vermont College.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Macmillan Audio; Unabridged edition (September 17, 2019)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Audio CD ‏ : ‎ 12 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1250622697
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1250622693
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.44 x 0.85 x 6.75 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 16,938 ratings

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Edward Snowden
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Edward Snowden was born in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, and grew up in the shadow of Fort Meade. A systems engineer by training, he served as an officer of the Central Intelligence Agency, and worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency. He has received numerous awards for his public service, including the Right Livelihood Award, the German Whistleblower Prize, the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, and the Carl von Ossietzky Medal from the International League of Human Rights. Currently, he serves as president of the board of directors of the Freedom of the Press Foundation. (author photo copyright Lindsay Mills)

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4.7 out of 5 stars
16,938 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book well-written and interesting. They appreciate the insights and clear explanations of complex technological concepts. The story is gripping and interesting, with a personal and thoughtful narrative. Readers praise the author's courage and morality.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

513 customers mention "Readability"508 positive5 negative

Customers find the book engaging and informative. They praise the author as an excellent writer and say the memoir captures readers from the first page. The book is comprehensive and flawless, providing a comprehensive look into Snowden's life.

"...of technologies and systems in the book are comprehensive and flawless...." Read more

"...This is an important book...." Read more

"...This is a good book to read. If you're looking for top-secret information, I'm feeling espionage and cloak and dagger you will not see it here ...." Read more

"...My personal feelings for the man or the method aside, the book itself was a good read, I did get through it pretty quickly and it did hold my..." Read more

349 customers mention "Insight"336 positive13 negative

Customers find the book insightful, with facts and secrets. They appreciate the clear explanations of complex technological concepts. The book provides a clear understanding of government workings that the media does not. It is a must-read for anyone interested in cybersecurity.

"...written, relentlessly candid, passionately argued, and technologically insightful book by the person who, more than anyone else, is responsible for..." Read more

"...If you want a book, it gives you the perspective and analogy of an individual that commits the act of whistleblowing on a international scale of..." Read more

"...was a good read, I did get through it pretty quickly and it did hold my attention which is more than I can say for a lot of the books I have picked..." Read more

"...Absolutely fascinating. Brilliant man! Highly recommended!!" Read more

271 customers mention "Writing quality"246 positive25 negative

Customers enjoy the book's writing quality. They find the story engaging, well-told, and honest. The writing is eloquent and easy to read, with passionate pleas and insights into the NSA. Readers appreciate the clear explanations of the missing pieces and the well-centered title.

"...processing and storage capacity, and technologies such as natural language text processing, voice recognition, and image analysis, has created the..." Read more

"I'm just about half-way through this book. VERY interesting, and well-written,..." Read more

"...The book, is written very well. He tells it as if he was narrating a movie, but he's actually telling us how he came to be where he was...." Read more

"...Absolutely fascinating. Brilliant man! Highly recommended!!" Read more

229 customers mention "Story quality"218 positive11 negative

Customers find the story gripping and interesting. They describe it as a riveting chronicle of an American patriot. The book provides convincing, passionately argued sections on privacy and surveillance.

"...are answered in this beautifully written, relentlessly candid, passionately argued, and technologically insightful book by the person who, more than..." Read more

"...EDIT: I've finished it. I read it all in about 30 hours; it's that interesting, and it has that much relevance to our lives...." Read more

"...This book, and Snowden himself, is fascinating...." Read more

"The book itself is very well written. Easy to read, informative and fascinating, the bits I know firsthand..." Read more

61 customers mention "Courage"61 positive0 negative

Customers find the book an inspiring story about Ed Snowden's courage and morality. They describe him as a thoughtful, brave man with a conscience and values that remain intact. The book serves as a powerful reminder of the importance of individual conscience and accountability.

"...had time to think about his current situation; i think he has a good heart; i think he is pragmatic; I think he misses home and at a point he would..." Read more

"...center in Bluffdale UT, but this is a great book written by an incredible person...." Read more

"Fantastic book! Ed Snowden is an amazing real true Brave man, person like him do not even making point .0000000000001% of the population, At..." Read more

"...He is a thoroughly likeable fellow, and smart too...." Read more

54 customers mention "Personal detail"51 positive3 negative

Customers appreciate the personal aspects of the book. They find the interview thoughtful and the author's firsthand account honest and straightforward. The book humanizes the author and allows readers into his world. Readers appreciate the story told by the people for the people, clearly coming from their heart.

"...with his first and only girlfriend Lindsay brings a personal touch to the story...." Read more

"...With eloquence and honesty, Snowden shares his journey from NSA contractor to whistleblower, shedding light on the complexities of privacy, security..." Read more

"...by Joe Rogan made me aware of the book and the interview was so personal and thoughtful I carried that feeling into the book...." Read more

"...The personal information is an excellent read by itself, and the revelations about the IC's activities are truly worth much thought over the ethics..." Read more

27 customers mention "Privacy"21 positive6 negative

Customers find the book well-rounded and informative on privacy and security. They appreciate its stance on invasion of privacy, data encryption, the Tails operating system, and the Tor network. The book is described as descriptive and well-written, with an emphasis on individual conscience and accountability in safeguarding our freedoms. Readers praise the author's sacrifices to protect their civil liberties.

"...However, protecting privacy if fundamental to freedom. I’ll leave you this excerpt from his book:..." Read more

"...I want to because this is the story of someones best will in preserving ethics - the call in the heart of the innocent proclaiming an ideal - I..." Read more

"...of the importance of individual conscience and accountability in safeguarding our freedoms...." Read more

"...information that hasn't been published before, and so poses no tactical danger...." Read more

27 customers mention "Pacing"14 positive13 negative

Customers have different views on the book's pacing. Some find it fast-paced and engaging, like a thriller. Others mention it's slow in the beginning and drags a bit.

"...the method aside, the book itself was a good read, I did get through it pretty quickly and it did hold my attention which is more than I can say for..." Read more

"...over time morphed into something giant, without form or shape and ugly. Somebody had to step up and say "Stop"...." Read more

"...The action is quickly and quietly accomplished, while you innocently surf a favorite internet site...." Read more

"...Never mind that it's mostly autobiographical, starts out slow, and only builds to punching information in the last half of the book...." Read more

Riveting & Compelling - A Must Read Eye-Opening Memoir
5 out of 5 stars
Riveting & Compelling - A Must Read Eye-Opening Memoir
Before Ed Snowden became a whistleblower, the elusive & mostly unknown intelligence agency, The National Security Agency was joking known by insiders as “No Such Agency.” Because of Snowden’s exposure of the agency’s abuses and constitutional overreach, it’s now known as “Not Secret Anymore.”Everyone who reads Snowden’s memoir now know as much about Ed as the NSA does. Snowden’s memoir is an in-depth personal look into the boy who became a man. He goes to great lengths to explain his inspirations and motivations of why he threw his life, his then girlfriend, Lindsay, and his families lives into turmoil.His book teaches us how much our privacy has been breached, abused and sold & traded for profit by both the government and corporations. Snowden’s memoir also asks the question, who is watching the “watchers”. He also mentions how the Congress, watchdogs and Executive branches of government failed to protect its citizens.Snowden also mentions that he took an oath to uphold the US Constitution, that he will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States ...”Snowden makes a convincing argument that he was merely defending his oath when he saw illegal abuses against American citizens being conducted by the NSA.As of today, I have not seen any concrete evidence that any of Snowden’s revelations have brought harm to anyone in the intelligence community. Perhaps just embarrassment and anger. Whether you agree or disagree with what Snowden did, I ask people to ask themselves — are we better or worse off for knowing?Some say information is the most valuable commodity in the world, how could one possibly not want to know about the abuses and privacy breaches mostly unknown before Snowden. At least now, people can encrypt, and adjust their devices and online habits for more privacy. At least now, people have a choice because they are aware of the extent of the massive data collection and storage by the NSA.But don’t take my word for it, read Permanent Record and decide for yourselves.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2019
    The revolution in communication and computing technologies which has continually accelerated since the introduction of integrated circuits in the 1960s and has since given rise to the Internet, ubiquitous mobile telephony, vast data centres with formidable processing and storage capacity, and technologies such as natural language text processing, voice recognition, and image analysis, has created the potential, for the first time in human history, of mass surveillance to a degree unimagined even in dystopian fiction such as George Orwell's 1984 or attempted by the secret police of totalitarian regimes like the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, or North Korea. But, residents of enlightened developed countries such as the United States thought, they were protected, by legal safeguards such as the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, from having their government deploy such forbidding tools against its own citizens. Certainly, there was awareness, from disclosures such as those in James Bamford's 1982 book The Puzzle Palace, that agencies such as the National Security Agency (NSA) were employing advanced and highly secret technologies to spy upon foreign governments and their agents who might attempt to harm the United States and its citizens, but their activities were circumscribed by a legal framework which strictly limited the scope of their domestic activities.

    Well, that's what most people believed until the courageous acts by Edward Snowden, a senior technical contractor working for the NSA, revealed, in 2013, multiple programs of indiscriminate mass surveillance directed against, well, everybody in the world, U.S. citizens most definitely included. The NSA had developed and deployed a large array of hardware and software tools whose mission was essentially to capture all the communications and personal data of everybody in the world, scan it for items of interest, and store it forever where it could be accessed in future investigations. Data were collected through a multitude of means: monitoring traffic across the Internet, collecting mobile phone call and location data (estimated at five billion records per day in 2013), spidering data from Web sites, breaking vulnerable encryption technologies, working with “corporate partners” to snoop data passing through their facilities, and fusing this vast and varied data with query tools such as XKEYSCORE, which might be though of as a Google search engine built by people who from the outset proclaimed, “Heck yes, we're evil!”

    How did Edward Snowden, over his career a contractor employee for companies including BAE Systems, Dell Computer, and Booz Allen Hamilton, and a government employee of the CIA, obtain access to such carefully guarded secrets? What motivated him to disclose this information to the media? How did he spirit the information out of the famously security-obsessed NSA and get it into the hands of the media? And what were the consequences of his actions? All of these questions are answered in this beautifully written, relentlessly candid, passionately argued, and technologically insightful book by the person who, more than anyone else, is responsible for revealing the malignant ambition of the government of the United States and its accomplices in the Five Eyes (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) to implement and deploy a global panopticon which would shrink the scope of privacy of individuals to essentially zero—in the words of an NSA PowerPoint (of course) presentation from 2011, “Sniff It All, Know It All, Collect It All, Process It All, Exploit It All, Partner It All”. They didn't mention “Store It All Forever”, but with the construction of the US$1.5 billion Utah Data Center which consumes 65 megawatts of electricity, it's pretty clear that's what they're doing.

    Edward Snowden was born in 1983 and grew up along with the personal computer revolution. His first contact with computers was when his father brought home a Commodore 64, on which father and son would play many games. Later, just seven years old, his father introduced him to programming on a computer at the Coast Guard base where he worked, and, a few years later, when the family had moved to the Maryland suburbs of Washington DC after his father had been transferred to Coast Guard Headquarters, the family got a Compaq 486 PC clone which opened the world of programming and exploration of online groups and the nascent World Wide Web via the narrow pipe of a dial-up connection to America Online. In those golden days of the 1990s, the Internet was mostly created by individuals for individuals, and you could have any identity, or as many identities as you wished, inventing and discarding them as you explored the world and yourself. This was ideal for a youth who wasn't interested in sports and tended to be reserved in the presence of others. He explored the many corners of the Internet and, like so many with the talent for understanding complex systems, learned to deduce the rules governing systems and explore ways of using them to his own ends. Bob Bickford defines a hacker as “Any person who derives joy from discovering ways to circumvent limitations.” Hacking is not criminal, and it has nothing to do with computers. As his life progressed, Snowden would learn how to hack school, the job market, and eventually the oppressive surveillance state.

    By September 2001, Snowden was working for an independent Web site developer operating out of her house on the grounds of Fort Meade, Maryland, the home of the NSA (for whom, coincidentally, his mother worked in a support capacity). After the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he decided, in his family's long tradition of service to their country (his grandfather is a Rear Admiral in the Coast Guard, and ancestors fought in the Revolution, Civil War, and both world wars), that his talents would be better put to use in the intelligence community. His lack of a four year college degree would usually be a bar to such employment, but the terrorist attacks changed all the rules, and military veterans were being given a fast track into such jobs, so, after exploring his options, Snowden enlisted in the Army, under a special program called 18 X-Ray, which would send qualifying recruits directly into Special Forces training after completing their basic training.

    His military career was to prove short. During a training exercise, he took a fall in the forest which fractured the tibia bone in both legs and was advised he would never be able to qualify for Special Forces. Given the option of serving out his time in a desk job or taking immediate “administrative separation” (in which he would waive the government's liability for the injury), he opted for the latter. Finally, after a circuitous process, he was hired by a government contractor and received the exclusive Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information security clearance which qualified him to work at the CIA.

    A few words are in order about contractors at government agencies. In some media accounts of the Snowden disclosures, he has been dismissed as “just a contractor”, but in the present-day U.S. government where nothing is as it seems and much of everything is a scam, in fact many of the people working in the most sensitive capacities in the intelligence community are contractors supplied by the big “beltway bandit” firms which have sprung up like mushrooms around the federal swamp. You see, agencies operate under strict limits on the number of pure government (civil service) employees they can hire and, of course, government employment is almost always forever. But, if they pay a contractor to supply a body to do precisely the same job, on site, they can pay the contractor from operating funds and bypass the entire civil service mechanism and limits and, further, they're free to cut jobs any time they wish and to get rid of people and request a replacement from the contractor without going through the arduous process of laying off or firing a “govvy”. In all of Snowden's jobs, the blue badged civil servants worked alongside the green badge contractors without distinction in job function. Contractors would rarely ever visit the premises of their nominal “employers” except for formalities of hiring and employee benefits. One of Snowden's co-workers said “contracting was the third biggest scam in Washington after the income tax and Congress.”

    His work at the CIA was in system administration, and he rapidly learned that regardless of classification levels, compartmentalisation, and need to know, the person in a modern organisation who knows everything, or at least has the ability to find out if interested, is the system administrator. In order to keep a system running, ensure the integrity of the data stored on it, restore backups when hardware, software, or user errors cause things to be lost, and the myriad other tasks that comprise the work of a “sysadmin”, you have to have privileges to access pretty much everything in the system. You might not be able to see things on other systems, but the ones under your control are an open book. The only safeguard employers have over rogue administrators is monitoring of their actions, and this is often laughably poor, especially as bosses often lack the computer savvy of the administrators who work for them.

    After nine months on the job, an opening came up for a CIA civil servant job in overseas technical support. Attracted to travel and exotic postings abroad, Snowden turned in his green badge for a blue one and after a training program, was sent to exotic…Geneva as computer security technician, under diplomatic cover. As placid as it may seem, Geneva was on the cutting edge of CIA spying technology, with the United Nations, numerous international agencies, and private banks all prime targets for snooping.

    Two years later Snowden was a contractor once again, this time with Dell Computer, who placed him with the NSA, first in Japan, then back in Maryland, and eventually in Hawaii as lead technologist of the Office of Information Sharing, where he developed a system called “Heartbeat” which allowed all of NSA's sites around the world to share their local information with others. It can be thought of as an automated blog aggregator for Top Secret information. This provided him personal access to just about everything the NSA was up to, world-wide. And he found what he read profoundly disturbing and dismaying.

    Once he became aware of the scope of mass surveillance, he transferred to another job in Hawaii which would allow him to personally verify its power by gaining access to XKEYSCORE. His worst fears were confirmed, and he began to patiently, with great caution, and using all of his insider's knowledge, prepare to bring the archives he had spirited out from the Heartbeat system to the attention of the public via respected media who would understand the need to redact any material which might, for example, put agents in the field at risk. He discusses why, based upon his personal experience and that of others, he decided the whistleblower approach within the chain of command was not feasible: the unconstitutional surveillance he had discovered had been approved at the highest levels of government—there was nobody who could stop it who had not already approved it.

    The narrative then follows preparing for departure, securing the data for travel, taking a leave of absence from work, travelling to Hong Kong, and arranging to meet the journalists he had chosen for the disclosure. There is a good deal of useful tradecraft information in this narrative for anybody with secrets to guard. Then, after the stories began to break in June, 2013, the tale of his harrowing escape from the long reach of Uncle Sam is recounted. Popular media accounts of Snowden “defecting to Russia” are untrue. He had planned to seek asylum in Ecuador, and had obtained a laissez-passer from the Ecuadoran consul and arranged to travel to Quito from Hong Kong via Moscow, Havana, and Caracas, as that was the only routing which did not pass through U.S. airspace or involve stops in countries with extradition treaties with the U.S. Upon arrival in Moscow, he discovered that his U.S. passport had been revoked while en route from Hong Kong, and without a valid passport he could neither board an onward flight nor leave the airport. He ended up trapped in the Moscow airport for forty days while twenty-seven countries folded to U.S. pressure and denied him political asylum. After spending so long in the airport he even became tired of eating at the Burger King there, on August 1st, 2013 Russia granted him temporary asylum. At this writing, he is still in Moscow, having been joined in 2017 by Lindsay Mills, the love of his life he left behind in Hawaii in 2013, and who is now his wife.

    This is very much a personal narrative, and you will get an excellent sense for who Edward Snowden is and why he chose to do what he did. The first thing that struck me is that he really knows his stuff. Some of the press coverage presented him as a kind of low-level contractor systems nerd, but he was principal architect of EPICSHELTER, NSA's worldwide backup and archiving system, and sole developer of the Heartbeat aggregation system for reports from sites around the globe. At the time he left to make his disclosures, his salary was US$120,000 per year, hardly the pay of a humble programmer. His descriptions of technologies and systems in the book are comprehensive and flawless. He comes across as motivated entirely by outrage at the NSA's flouting of the constitutional protections supposed to be afforded U.S. citizens and its abuses in implementing mass surveillance, sanctioned at the highest levels of government across two administrations from different political parties. He did not seek money for his disclosures, and did not offer them to foreign governments. He took care to erase all media containing the documents he removed from the NSA before embarking on his trip from Hong Kong, and when approached upon landing in Moscow by agents from the Russian FSB (intelligence service) with what was obviously a recruitment pitch, he immediately cut it off, saying,

    “Listen, I understand who you are, and what this is. Please let me be clear that I have no intention to cooperate with you. I'm not going to cooperate with any intelligence service. I mean no disrespect, but this isn't going to be that kind of meeting. If you want to search my bag, it's right here. But I promise you, there's nothing in it that can help you.”

    And that was that.

    Edward Snowden could have kept quiet, done his job, collected his handsome salary, continued to live in a Hawaiian paradise, and share his life with Lindsay, but he threw it all away on a matter of principle and duty to his fellow citizens and the Constitution he had sworn to defend when taking the oath upon joining the Army and the CIA. On the basis of the law, he is doubtless guilty of the three federal crimes with which he has been charged, sufficient to lock him up for as many as thirty years should the U.S. lay its hands on him. But he believes he did the correct thing in an attempt to right wrongs which were intolerable. I agree, and can only admire his courage. If anybody is deserving of a Presidential pardon, it is Edward Snowden.
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  • Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2019
    I'm just about half-way through this book. VERY interesting, and well-written,
    despite some reviews here - maybe written by English majors who are disappointed
    by anybody not Marcel Proust?

    I'm just coming on what so disturbed and motivated Snowden to make public the
    illegal activities of the NSA and the intelligence community (IC) at large. In short,
    they can see, and have been able to see since shortly after the towers came down on
    9/11, everything you've ever done on an internet-connected device or telephone.
    And, if it hadn't been attained by 2013, when Snowden made his revelations, it probably
    has been by now; they'reable to store it indefinitely. Thus, Permanent Record.
    They get around the constitutionally-proscribed illegality of this by redefining
    the words 'acquire' and 'obtain.' In common, dictionary usage, they acquire and
    obtain EVERYTHING. They redefine those words to refer to when the NSA and other
    IC agencies actually look into their databases to find information about people
    and agencies - none of which requires a warrant, by the way.

    YOUR RIGHT TO PRIVACY NO LONGER EXISTS. If you ever give them a reason to
    hurt you, they can destroy you, and get away with it.

    From the book:
    "At any time, the government could dig through the past communications of anyone
    it wanted to victimize in search of a crime (and everybody's communications
    contain evidence of something)"

    Just watched part of the movie about Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Fair Game.
    Her husband wrote about the Bush subterfuge to motivate the American public to support
    the Iraq war - even though it was known that Iraq had nothing to do with the towers
    coming down. They wanted to go after Saddam Hussein, and lied about 9/11 to do it.

    It's illegal for anyone, including government officials and employees,
    to knowingly out a CIA operative. The Bush administration did exactly that to
    Valerie Plame, to punish them for blowing the whistle about the yellow cake
    uranium, and offered up Scooter Libby to take the fall. Then Bush pardoned
    him. Valerie and her husband's lives were ruined by the disclosure, and a number
    of CIA assets were killed as a result. That would be a small example of what the
    government can do when it chooses. Breaking laws isn't a problem, so long as a
    president sanctions it. We've all heard Trump offer to pardon anyone who breaks
    the law if it gets him his purely politically motivated wall.

    This is an important book.

    EDIT: I've finished it. I read it all in about 30 hours; it's that interesting, and it has that much relevance to our lives. Smart TVs, Alexa, your phone even when it's turned off, are all ways they spy on us, AND EVERYBODY IN THE WORLD, pretty much. Meta-data, which I first thought was not a big deal at all, is HUGE. They know where you are pretty much all the time, what you buy, when you buy it, who you spend time with,when you go to bed, when you get up, who you or your SO is having an affair with. After the revelations the US government made some important changes to rectify the extent of IC spying on US citizens - or so they told us. They knew about all this well before Snowden made it public, so that very much strikes me as damage control, and window dressing. They simply aren't worthy of our trust. Obama, asked if he thought Snowden is a patriot, said no. I voted for that @#$%!!! Basically, our government completely flouted the 4th Amendment. If you read the book, you get a much clearer picture of the depth of what they know about you. Really it's shocking, and doesn't match up with anybody's idea of the freedom we keep telling each other that US citizens enjoy.

    Snowden is a hero. He sacrificed everything to tell us things we very much needed to know, and would be very glad we did, once we do. Buy the book, read it 3 times, lend it to your friends and family. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY WE WERE EVER GOING TO FIND OUT ABOUT THIS, BECAUSE OUR GOVERNMENT WAS NEVER GOING TO TELL US THE EXTENT TO WHICH THEY WERE - AND MOST LIKELY STILL DO, BREAKING THE LAW THEY'RE SWORN TO UPHOLD.

    BTW, when I first tried to enter this review, Amazon put up a notice about "unusual
    activity" in these reviews, and are limiting reviews to people with verified purchases.
    How interesting.
    33 people found this helpful
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  • Lolo
    5.0 out of 5 stars A nail biting thriller
    Reviewed in France on November 27, 2024
    Literally, one of the most thrilling biographies I have read. A must read in order to truly understand the golden cage we are all living in with mass surveillance and the end of privacy as se know it.
  • Siew Ting hr issue
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent read - receommend
    Reviewed in the United Arab Emirates on October 31, 2024
    A really interesting read and many parts of this story I didn't know. It goes into much more detail than the film 'Snowden' so I recommend you reading it even if you've seen the film.
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    Reviewed in Saudi Arabia on July 12, 2024
    you will get a hardcover but it has no image or anything they are covering it with a paperback image of the book than you can easily take off ...
  • Gianluca
    5.0 out of 5 stars Consegnato nei tempi previsti
    Reviewed in Italy on March 26, 2024
    Tutto ok
  • Carlos Hernandez Nava
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente lectura
    Reviewed in Mexico on July 26, 2020
    Excelente lectura y más para quienes están el el área de seguridad de la información, y con el duda de si lo que hacen con la información es algo "bueno"