The name is one few would fail to recognize. Edward Snowden has, for better or for worse, become virtually synonymous with the term whistleblower after his 2013 revelations that shed a bright light upon the reality of a post-surveillance America (and post-surveillance World). The book released amongst rumblings of lawsuits from various US government bodies before it went to press, but sure enough, Freedom of the Press stood firm (at least in the English edition of the book – the Chinese translation already has violated publishing agreements by censorship as pointed out by Snowden himself) and the book’s contents remained untouched.
After receiving the book as an early Christmas gift, I have finally completed the 339 page memoir and I thought it was a remarkable piece of published literature; Snowden can write much more than scripts to make a desk job easier. Even though a majority of the book is focused upon the story of what led Snowden to leak the classified information to the public (roughly fifty pages cover any details of post-leak Snowden) this is done with such composure and self-reflection as to feel more as a whistleblower manifesto (similar to the Hacker’s Manifesto mentioned early on in the story of many technophiles, Snowden included) for future generations than a narcissistic boast of the work he has done.
Full disclosure: I harboured a tremendous amount of respect for Edward Snowden, a fact only made stronger upon viewing Laura Poitras’ masterpiece Citizenfour upon its release. The making of the documentary is briefly mentioned, more as technical reality simply of the presence of Poitras’ film cameras present in the Hong Kong hotel, as well as Snowden’s commendation of Poitras’ foresight to film as much as she could. While I cannot recommend the film enough, I believe the book to be complimentary to the documentary in a number of ways.
For starters, the book perfectly answers the first question directly following the massive leak of 2013: Who is Edward Snowden? Additionally, why did he decide to take such impactful action? These two questions are the pillars of the thesis of this book and, holistically, Snowden knows that he is more than just his decision to leak information to the public, which he artfully is able to express. A journey into the mindset that went behind the decisions that led to 2013 is a glimpse into the mind of an “ordinary revolutionary”. Snowden is gifted, clever, and has a tremendous ability to learn, but he is nothing terribly superhuman. His “powers” of computing and synthesizing technological progress in his mind stem not from divine intervention, but merely exposure and dedication to understanding a system set that intrigued him since childhood: computers.
His witnessing of the erosion of the Internet that raised Generation X and half of the Millennials happened more outside of his work as a public servant or government contractor, it came from consistent utilisation and reverence for the notion of a connected world, a feeling that I doubt is terribly alien to anyone reading this post around the world. The good news here, is thanks to the efforts from Snowden, amongst many others, there is increasingly more to be done to combat and resist such bastardisation of the Global Network.
I will only keep these mentions of tools brief, as there exist plenty of experts far more versed than I am, and although it is nice to know these tools exist, for the average user they are still just beyond reach of regular utilisation. To begin, the work of the Freedom of the Press Foundation must not be understated, and the connection to the book is rather direct with Snowden being elected President of the board in 2016. Additionally, Snowden has publicly lauded the efforts made by Open Whisper Systems, creators of Signal Messenger: the messenger service maintaining industry-standard encryption practices (even Brian Acton, co-founder of WhatsApp, has converted to the service after Facebook changed his vision for WhatsApp as an encrypted messaging service, going so far as to donate $50 million to help start the Signal Foundation), as well as Quebes OS, an operating system that Snowden implies was utilised during the writing of his book. Other tools worth mentioning are TOR Project (and a related full operating system Tails), Fastmail or ProtonMail for secure email, HTTPS Everywhere, or really any of the work done by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, such as Privacy Badger.
The list could go on and on, but that deviates from the impact of the book. The foundations above provide a more than adequate starting point to the problems and solutions currently facing Internet freedom and its related issues. For those of a more political minded bend, there is of course, always the opportunity to join up with your local Pirate Party and see what can be done from there.
In closing comments regarding Snowden’s book itself, it was, in my opinion, not even Snowden himself that provided the most impactful glimpse into this story, but a wonderfully honest and open look at the diary of his better half, Lindsey Mills, that were written during the days Snowden was making his escape, leaks, and public headlines. The impact from this final chapter provided almost an even better answer to the question that Snowden addresses directly in Chapter 17: What does it matter if our Internet activity is collected en masse by a government? Though Snowden’s analogy of such disregard for the consequences is akin to one believing “I don’t believe in Freedom of Speech because I have nothing to say” the logical fallacy of that being almost painfully evident, it is in Chapter 28: “From the Diaries of Lindsay Mills” that the personal impact of the weight behind the surveillance machine of the US government are illustrated. And I will not say more than that for fear of spoiling the impact of the end of the book.
In conclusion, the book was a joy to read, an inspiration for my own career path, and an educational glimpse into the mechanics of government-corporate relations in the 21st Century. What is amazing to me is that all this is accomplished by Snowden not saying much that we don’t already know: thanks to Snowden himself, we all know about metadata being collected, about NSA and other agency spying programmes, and a lot of us even cover our webcams on our laptops. All Snowden really states in this book is what we already know, contextualized in the world we live in. The impact is almost intrinsic, coming from “right in front of your nose” style revelations during the reading of the book. The fact that Snowden is a gifted writer is just the cherry on the top.
Varasi Academica 