Edward Snowden: Permanent Record - book review

Fascinating on many levels. A good story, overall. Although the pace of the book was too slow in the beginning and there were too many details in Part One (for my taste), and the tone was a bit too unnecessarily dramatic at times, the rest of the book is relentless, full of insights and as intimate as it can be.

Snowden comes off as a down-to-earth and a self-aware man who sacrificed a comfortable life with a crazy paycheck for the truth that was eating at him for years before he decided to come forward and denounce his own government for breaking the law. The book depicts his slow transformation from an honest law-abiding patriot to a man who becomes utterly shocked by how much his own government exploits its own citizens.

It's a whistle-blower story and a thorough (but not too "techy") analysis of the dangers of mass tech surveillance. But it's also much more. It's a story about a man with integrity who valued truth above everything and wasn't afraid to risk it all. It's an example of a man who showed courage through action, not just through words.

The biggest criticism I have is maybe the over-reliance on personal life stories and not enough details into the actual technologies that he worked on during his stints at CIA and NSA—to which he admitted in the book, not wanting to reveal every detail of how he hacked into the system as to not expose it to further danger, which is fair enough, but personally, a bit disappointing. I was expecting more techy stuff. Still, it was an entertaining read.

Rating: 3.5/5