Snowden, in his own words

I have just finished reading Permanent Record by Edward Snowden. We is a former IT contractor who became world famous after becoming a whistleblower to expose the illegal activities he was during his work for the US security services. He wrote this book to tell his story and help people understand why he did this act that made him a wanted ma.

I can relate to some of his upbringing where he got into computers, but he was even more of a geek than me. He writes well and keeps the reader engaged. There is enough technical information for those who want it without putting off those who are more interested in the man. He wanted to serve his country after 9/11 and decided to make use of his IT skills. He did a spell in the military to bypass some of the academic requirements, but was invalided out of that. He subsequently worked in US installations around the world and saw how they were hoovering up all available data in the name of defending the country, but going beyond what the law allows. It is pretty scary stuff and it made me think again about how much I should expose myself online.

He is now living in Russia as he got stranded there whilst trying to get to somewhere else beyond the reaches of US law. His girlfrield joined him there and they are now married.

I will not give away all the details of his story as I encourage you to read this book. It is telling that the government tried to stop publication. Snowden may not be able to get all the royalties. I notice he is not currently active on Twitter, so maybe he has something going on. He now works with the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

I have read quite a few articles about Snowden, but it was great to get his own view. You should also check out these two movies.

Citizen 4 is a documentary account of when he first met up with journalist to get his information out to the world.

Snowden is a biographical drama of his life by Oliver Stone. Some events and people may not be exactly as in reality.

My current reading is What I Talk About When I Talk About Running by Haruki Murakami and The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (on my phone). As I also read some weekly papers and magazines it can take me a while to get through a book. I log my reading on Goodreads, but have wondered if it would be possible to implement something like it on Hive.