Cryptography has interested me for a long time.  At one point I dreamed of working at the National Security Agency building code-breaking machines.  The idea of living on the bleeding edge of technology, pushing performance, exploring what was possible - not just practical - appealed to me.  As time went on I began to realize that such people actually worked for government contractors like Mitre.  Then the government got in the business of limiting key sizes.  [In a viable cryptography system, bigger keys mean more security].  The government was saying that people had to be more vulnerable and US businesses had to ship less secure products internationally, because they wanted to monitor everyone’s communications.  This didn’t sit well with me and still doesn’t.  The satellite modems I help build today are compromised because the US Military holds back what American technology companies can do.  Everyone else can make more secure systems, just not Americans.

After reading James Bamford’s The Puzzle Palace, I knew that the NSA monitored all international phone calls.  In light of 9/11, I figured that monitoring increased to try and include data transfers.  But Snowden’s releases showed the NSA was trying to record everyone.  [Other reporting showed they were recording information that they couldn’t decode today, just so they’d have it when the day came that they could.]  The level of surveillance was shocking, on par with the Soviet KGB.  The NSA got its wrist slapped, but there was no outrange outside the 5% of the population that could understand the issues.

Permanent Record is an autobiography.  It covers Snowdens life from childhood to the present.  In fact the majority of the book covers his development before he decided to go public.  Lots of information about how he came to his views on privacy and surveillance.  While he touches on them, this is not the book if you want to understand the NSA programs he brought into the light.

I bought the book when I heard the DOJ was suing the author.  I thought they were trying to keep it from being published, but their case was limited to “violating non-disclosure agreements”.  [You know, like the NDA’s Trump has his people sign so they won’t expose crimes.]

I’ve always been a little conflicted about Snowden.  I am grateful that he blew the whistle on the NSA spying on Americans.  But I also acknowledge that he did sign up to keep things secret.  However I can’t imagine that going through proper channels would have done anything except get retribution.  He would never get a fair hearing in America. Oddly enough, the US would treat him as badly as the Soviet Union would, just to make an example.  Snowden is safer in Russia…unless he criticizes the President.

The book set me straight on two points.  First, his reveal was in 2013.  That’s Obama second term, much more recently than I remembered, which means this stuff was going on for a decade.  Second it clarified why he ended up in Russia.  He was traveling to Ecuador, following a three-hop route to avoid countries with extradition treaties to the US.  During the flight for the first hop to Russia, the US revoked his passport, and that was the end of this travels.

While a knee-jerk purchase, I am glad I read Permanent Record.