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Narrated by Holter Graham
Edward SnowdenUnabridged — 11 hours, 31 minutes
Narrated by Holter Graham
Edward SnowdenUnabridged — 11 hours, 31 minutes
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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.
Permanent Record is a riveting account and a curious artifact. The book is unlikely to change anyone's mind about Snowden, but when it comes to privacy and speech and the Constitution, his story clarifies the stakes.
09/23/2019
The notorious and celebrated whistleblower---who divulged top-secret documents revealing the mass surveillance of citizens' phone calls, emails, and internet activity by the U. S. National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations---recounts his battle with the system in this impassioned memoir. Snowden, a former systems engineer and NSA contractor and now board president of the Freedom of the Press Foundation from his Moscow exile, presents himself as animated by a combination of idealism and covert nonconformity, someone who subverted the rules as a civic duty from middle school history class to his CIA training program. (As a teenager he hacked classified files at Los Alamos National Laboratory, then pestered lab officials into fixing the security flaw.) Snowden's well-observed portrait of intelligence work reveals spooky Langley night shifts, spies pilfering nude selfies from private online accounts, and his own intricate, suspenseful operation to steal documents using byzantine encryption and tiny storage cards smuggled past guards. His somewhat paranoid brief against the surveillance state is less convincing; he envisions the government permanently recording every communication, movement, misdemeanor, and sin, subjecting citizens to "oppression by total automated law enforcement," but he cites no cases of serious harm from NSA surveillance and doesn't make a strong argument that it leads inevitably to oppressive control. Still, Snowden's many admirers will find his saga both captivating and inspiring. (Sept.)
A riveting account... Reads like a literary thriller... Snowden pushes the reader to reflect more seriously on what every American should be asking already.”
—The New York Times
“Gripping... Snowden demonstrates a knack for explaining in lucid and compelling language the inner workings of [CIA and NSA] systems and the menace he came to believe they posed.”
—The Washington Post
“Snowden eventually decided his loyalties lay not with the agencies he was working for, but the public they were set up to protect. He felt ordinary citizens were being betrayed, and he had a duty to explain how.... His account of the experiences that led him to take momentous decisions, along with the details he gives of his family background, serve as a robust defense against accusations that he is a traitor."
—The Guardian
“Even for those of us who’ve followed the Snowden revelations closely, Permanent Record is full of surprises.... A deeply reluctant whistleblower, Snowden also emerges as a peculiarly American patriot, with roots that go back to Plymouth Rock.... As his memoir makes clear, all the techniques he exposed in 2013 remain in place.”
—The Nation
“Well-written... Snowden’s descriptions of the real impact of the various surveillance systems he disclosed—stripped of abstract concepts and technical jargon—are some of the most disturbing parts of the book.... Offers a useful reminder of the god-like omniscience that digital data can bestow on those with the power to collect it all.”
—The Economist
“Snowden’s book is straightforward, admirably so.... Having gazed through the windows of the panopticon, he experienced that rarity, a moment of vision: The world must be told these things I know. Against absurd odds, he delivered his knowledge to us.”
—Jonathan Lethem, The New York Review of Books
“An extraordinary book... A riveting blend of spycraft as Snowden painstakingly figures out how to confirm his suspicions without tipping off his bosses, and a brilliant ethical treatise as Snowden reveals the reasoning that took him from each step to the next... The best proof yet that Snowden is exactly what he appears to be: a gung-ho guy from a military family who believes deeply in service and the values embodied by the US constitution, who explored multiple avenues of squaring his oath to uphold those values with the corrupt and illegal practices he saw around him, and worked out a breathtakingly bold and ambitious plan to do what no one else had ever managed: to expose wrongdoing in a way that provoked sustained interest and sparked action.”
—Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing
11/01/2019
Former intelligence agent for the CIA and the NSA Snowden shares how he personally helped design the sophisticated electronic monitoring system that made it feasible for the government to collect, store, and search at will through all the world's digital communications. When he began to realize how his own design became completely hidden from everyone, including most lawmakers, he decided to take action. After his release of hundreds of thousands of classified documents, Snowden became a fugitive, and he eventually ended up in exile in Russia where he remains to this day. Holter Graham's steady paced, clearly enunciated delivery nicely conveys the author's highly personal revelations about his historical decision. Snowden's critical work ignited hot debate about national security and individual privacy and influenced the 2015 passage of the USA Freedom Act, while American public opinion of what he did remains divided. He has been variously labeled a hero, a whistleblower, a dissident, a patriot, and a traitor. VERDICT Highly recommended for all libraries, with the qualification that libraries supplement Snowden's personal account with other important works on this story, including Luke Harding's The Snowden Files, Glenn Greenwald's No Place to Hide, and Phil Coleman's Edward Snowden.—Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Edward Snowden, who shot to fame after releasing classified information that made him flee for asylum, shares his story in this audiobook. Holter Graham narrates with skill, sharing details of espionage in the digital age. Of particular note are what led Snowden to be involved in the U.S. government’s spying and why he revealed it all as a whistleblower. Graham’s steady tone and pacing imbue Snowden with relatability and credibility. This story is a worthwhile listen not only for those interested in political nonfiction, but also for everyone who has been affected by the government’s actions. A.G.M. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
| BN ID: | 2940173008459 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Macmillan Audio |
| Publication date: | 09/17/2019 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 938,265 |
