Permanent Record

by Snowden, Edward

Published: September 17, 2019

Read: January 1, 2019

★★★★★

Goodreads

Review

Snowden's intelligence, candor, and articulate writing really shine in this book. This is a true autobiography of a man whose entire life is defined by disclosing top-secret government surveillance. This offers some of the most comprehensive and compelling arguments for privacy I have ever seen. Emotional, logical, and historical. This book is basically at the forefront of one of the most important issues of our generation, privacy. It is still an engaging read with incredibly moving moments. Reading like an incredible spy novel at some moments except everything actually happened. Rarely do nonfiction books move me from tears to indignation to excitement to hope.  While perhaps not timeless and with a slow start, for now this book will be at THE top of my recommendation list.

Notes

Preface

After 911, technologists become the future as they shifted from targeted survelliance to mass survelliance. Broke their own rules hiring Snowden without a degree. He built a backup of data. Any agent could search database. Had communications of everyone.shift from polynoymi to survelliance capitalism. Concealed what was actually happening cuz knew would have outrage. Early internet was not encrypted and governments could survel without telling anyone and fucking loves it. Freedom of country measured by respect of rights. He only gave documents to journalists and didn't reveal anything himself. Digitalizing means making it permanent.

He posted a question and a professional software engineer would compose a 2000 word response and free help. 12 years old and antonymous. Amazing community. Anoyomous so you can disassociate yourself from previous opinions and reinvent yourself. We can speak our minds without fear of having to defend something. imagine if you could choose a new voice and face everyday. Forgive us our sins, no permanent record. Having a minimal social identity allows you to change much easier.

Fun game to find people's alt.

Adults liked to substitute their own hopes and dreams for your own. Democracy means giving up consent. Teachers are authoritariona nd constantly changed their rules arbitrarily. school wouldnt recognize dissent. Hacking means learning rules better than rule makes and hijacking source of input and output. Syllabus gives you how to get a good grade or how to get the most freedom for a passing grade.

If someone thinks your dumb, that's a weakness to take advantage of later.

Agents in intelligence community is just being normal. Trying to be inconspicuous.

Cia and fbi evacuated on 9/11. Background check going to find anything that can be used against you too. Talk to everyone.

You have these old posts and you might be tempted to delete them. But that would perpetuate the idea that people are perfect and can't grow and change.

Government contractors are third party. Government employees are poached after getting clearance to handle everything for profit. Imagine a private company contractors everything.we are talking intelligence agencies.

He was hired and the guy negotiated him up. Government contractor get paid overly of salary better for everyone besides taxpayer. Bid said if all goes well you will never see me again.

If CIA doesn't have info about someone, they Google them. So you need something like TOR. Tor being public means anyone can use it providing more cover.

Things that harm majority can benefit elite. 90% of internet traffic passes through tech operated, owned, or made by us governments or companies. Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, wuallcom, Cisco, Amazon, google, facebook all American subject to American law. Intelligence community uses this home field advantage to do insane mass survelliance.

Us hides secrets even from those from top secret clearance.

Nsa was way more technical advanced by CIA. But way more lqx on security. The most basic including backup and encryption. No backup for NSA servers.

Classified version justified mass surveillancey as advance of tech. Complete shift from targeted to bulk. No court could issue enough warrants and global world needs global power. Stellar wind transferred from defending America's to controlling. Since 2001. Bush changed meaning of basic words. Can collect them, but only needs warrants if you search them or "obtained". No "obtained" or "acquired " if you just automatically store them. Metadata is a beast the very essence of content showing who you message and where and when. Law always lags tech by a generation. The content is very protected , but NSA super cares about the Mets data instead. Phone gives his employer more information about him then even be knows since he doesn't know where he is.

Mass surveillance first by Russia and Nazi. Usually done with a census. A cellphone has more than both countries at the time combined. Now we have never ending census that forgive nothing.

Many laws make law enforcement's job harder. This isn't a bug, it's a core feature. Mass survelliance on public property. With ai, gang affiliation(appearance) and drug deals(meetings) you have RoboCop's. Grotesque future of all equal before the law of all law enforcement.

Cloud companies own your data. They can stop you from access it if they don't like it while keeping a copy for their record and authorities if they ever ask.

World where every law is enforced is one where everyone is a criminal.

Linsey wouldn't know her info was being collected. If you ever get out of line, we will use this against you.

Terror is a permanent danger avoided by constant vigilence. Surviellance gave little wins and content loss. Us government Surviellance in 2001 got the us in on the ground floor of mass survelliance and command was never again which is impossible.

Arab Spring was declaration that government answers to people. People aren't subjects. People are citizens agree to be governed..are we a government of laws or leaders in charge. If government is people consenting, then favors egalitarianism and democracy best offers that.

We have right to worship freely because government can't law against it. This limit of laws is privacy. Warrants. We have no common definition. Citizens shouldn't have to justify desire for privacy, state must justify it's violation. If you don't claim you privacy, youa re ceding it. If you cede your privacy, you are really surrendering everyone's. If you only need privacy if our have something to hide, is saying no one should or does have anything they want to hide like unemployment history, immigration status, financial status, and health records, sex history. Like you don't care about freedom of speech because you don't have anything to say.

Half of first 10 amendments introduce inefficiencies into law enforcement. If you want to search someone, you need a warrant and probably cause. Nsa maintained that because your internet data isn't property because your already shared data with this party (ISP) you forfeited rights and search and seizure is when smaller look at data already collected.

Any public hearing. The Ic would not cooperate and actively lie.

Patriot act mandated third party to provide anything relevant to terrorism or foreign intelligence. Nsa interpreted this as license to collect all metadata from att and Verizon ongoing and daily. American citizens included.

Prism collected data from Microsoft, yahoo, Google, apple all photos, search queries and all data on their cloud.

Upstream collection means collection from infrastructure switches, Towers, overseas cables. Secret wiretapping equipment embedded in corporate isps.

Everything...

How to choose data to capture? Is this real or overselling? Agencies and contractors love ambitious projects.

Any requests goes through to machines in allied countries and bases.

Snowden created backup of unique files using deduplication. Over course of Snowden career, agency stores data for weeks, months, years. Why collect anything if you don't have it when it's useful? The dream of a permanent record collecting everything.

He jumped the ladder. Cliff his partner would sell Sell by making promised they couldn't keep. And snowdens job was to reduce the degree by which he had lied to just enough so they didn't go to jail.

Cia private cloud. Corporate surviellance impoverish our private existence while enriching themselves. Public versions of these private stuff of cloud. Regression to mainframe basically.

If something can be donez it is being done. What China is doing publically, America might be doing secretly to the world. The sheer acheivement of tracking billions of communications is so amazing you can forget to be appalled. Psap allows NSA to capture all international communications without a warrant with the Bush. Protect America act of 2007 reassured Americans while defending Psap. There was a report of the intelligence community. The classified version of the document was privy to only dozens of people. He is alerted whenever higher classified docs are kept on lower classified drives. One day he stumbled on it. Any

turmoil does passive copying. Turbine actively tampers by redirecting requests to NSA. Choose malwares to deploy. In milliseconds. You just got hacked. Few Congress would know. Legislature fail.  Secret court would uphold secret progress by reinterpreting federal laws. ACLU sued IC and government defense was that it is secret and so there is no legal standing on government secrets. Reasoning accepted. Judicial fail. Executive order began mass Surviellance. Executive fai I ed. Ic hacked the system and constitution.  Declaration of Independence was treason.

1777 first whistleblower case and law. Officer avoiding fighting his ship. First law declared it duty of officers to report any fraud or misdimenors. Even during revolution it everyone acts as duty for pricinipled dissent. Superiors were complicit. Proper channel were to catch dissenters. Chain of command binds. Every culture indicates it's relation to power by word used to describe whistle blower. Is it a leak or traitor? Or ethical and positive. Leak is more about personal self interest. 2013 leaked conference call between all qeasa leaders just for political advantage. Ic loves talking of successes. Situational approach to secrecy. Secrecy is all about control to subvert democratic oversight.

He wanted the media, the fourth branch of government. To fully disclose a massive insult to the American people.

He would explain to his co-workers why they work was violating the Constitution and oaths they swore to uphold and verbal shrug in response. "Ok what can you do about it?" Resignation and helplessness. Instead of just disclosing the existence, he wanted to show the process of secrey. Needed to avoid getting his own disclosure mixed in with the crazy ones done everyday and he wanted a partner to help avoid hazards of secret disclosure and correct his biases.

Why not WikiLeaks? After Manning, WikiLeaks went from redcated to just publishing all the docs. So he wanted journalists to dig through the technical mess and explain what's happening.

Why not NY times? There was an article about the beginnings of the program in 2004, but gov just said there were classified reasons and killed iy. A year later journalist just pressured the release. Journalists don't really know much about tech.

Two seeming, Huge gaps, nsa announces a huge data center and no one asks why do you need such a massive data center eating a city worth of energy. One article.

The chief tech officer spoke at public conference Gus. He said "at the CIA. we fundamentally try to collect everything and hang onto it forever. It is nearly within our grasp to compute on all human generated information." He told domestic journalists, agency could track their smartphones even when they were turned off and track every single one of their communications. "You should be asking the question what are your rights and who owns your data". Coverage only ran on Huffington Post. 313 views on YouTube.

Government position makes no distinction between disclosing to journalists or selling to enemies. Ic indoctrition said enemy is slightly better because journalists will tell everyone enemy won't really. He needed to choose people who would not buckle to massive power. He chose journalists who were already harassed by IC.

Citizen Four was a handle he used to contact journalists. Mac address from every device is left on every wifi it connects to. he wanted to use someone else's wifi, but not public at Starbucks because you have CCTV and people so memories with legs. He went driving, war driving, car is roaving wifi sensor. High powered antenna, magnetic gps sensor, powered provided by car, laptop, or battery. All fits in backpack, ran cheap laptop running tails a Linux os that resets and clears everything every time turned off. Tails spoofs Mac, built in support for Tor. Drove around neighborhood, and made map of networks with weak security. No security, jam network kicking everyone off, then sniff packets of people broadcasting authenitication to get credentials. Laura he would message often leaching off resort wifi, school, bank, library. He would not create any patterns and make tutorials for the journalists to use encrypted emails.

How do you get the info? Everything leaves a record. But complexity means no one understands and knows gaps except sys admins. Heartbeat ingesting data was the perfect cover. However how employee surviellance about preventation. Regular computers all thin clients with crippled CPUs and drives that did everything on computer. But Dell pcs legacy from 2009, wouldn't be tracked off network. He could say he wanted to make sure heartbeat worked with older operatorjng systems. On these machines he could search, filter, and organize as much as he wanted. Best way to get something out is taking a picture of the screen, not allowed it but mistakes happen. For storage, he used an sd. Mm size fits inside side of rubriks, cheek so he could swallow it, sock, pocket. Hardly ever trigger metal detectors. Extremely slow to write, encrypting, compressing, he was a master. Would take entire shift to fill card. Worked nights. Left many times . Read and studied indictments to avoid how they were caught. He bought rubriks cube and got it to be less nervous. All guards liked the cube, and he would love to talk to them about anything. Annoyed linlie by not talking cuz might be wired. He was probably the only one with access to everything so even with no traces... Metadata? If he stripped them, he would make the authenticity of docs worse. Gov loved to do userids on documents accessed in dates or picture pixels. Crazy. Put everything on drive on desk. Math can keep a secret when an army can't. Deletion is a public fiction. Modern oss just delete mapping to dataz doesn't touch data. Instant deletion. Australia and uk publically legistaled mass metadata collection. Western democracies shift between defenders of free internet to destroyers. Encryption is a true protection for survelliance. Used 8k bit keys.

Can go after keymasters or keys. Device manufacturers and encryption algs with backdoors. Software vulnerabilities. Best if ecnryption alg only on computer of user. He used multiple zero knowledge keys.

Dangers of letting a young boy rise very fast without losing idealism and cynicism. He occupied one of the most powerful positions in IC, while still being on the bottom rung of management.

Xkeyscore let's anaylst search everything of your life. He wanted to see it, go to ops who have real access and use tools. Went to Fort Mead to study analysts using to take back techniques to Honolulu. With an IP address of email, you can literally see activity and see people's desktops. Get pinged whenever is online. Read email, messages, social media. Search queries appear letter by letter. Everyone's info was there. Anaylsts like loveint, track lovers and interests listening to phonecalls and more. Illegal, but no one every sentenced. Public prosecution lol. Intercepted nudes were fun office currency if you found one you showed it to the boys. Everyone watches porn and stores photos of family. Geofences and internet messages, everything computer camera and mic.

Where to go? He wanted a meeting. All 5 eyes, all of Europe couldn't be counted for upholding political law against US political crimes. Africa and LA are impunity. China and Russia, middle East were just easy to discredit if he went there. He needed independent country that could hold off US. He chose Hong Kong, vibrant media and protest culture. Defacto existence in Beijing sphere of influence, while still being relatively independent. Cried for leaving Lindsey.

Took medical leave. 4 laptops, airgapped that never touched internet, decoy, secure communications, normal communications. Cash tickets to Tokyo then Hong Kong.

Journalists weren't showing up. Laura already got a few docs and was just convincing Glen Greenwall to commit to install encryption and new secure laptop. Mira hotel in crowded shopping center. 10 days he didn't leave. Us gov survelling world, how to explain to nontech people.

Journalists were very surprised he wasn't olde.r how did he have such access. Laura filmed this first meeting, the first time he met journalists. 5th was fisa order to Verizon to all. 6th was prism. He was being emailed for status updates and didn't respond. He knew gov would put full force behind finding leak and discredit him. He hoped to give his own account first. Didn't make any plans after disclosure. Didn't want to even get an arguemtn for foreign agent, espionage act would be sham trial. Hong Kong lawyers took on his case. He went to poorest neighborhood and stayed with refugees his other clients. He destroyed his keys and laptops data. China didn't adhere to UN refugee stuff and Us charged him with espionage act. Ecuador was part of democratic socialist ideas, decide all it's debt was illegitimate. Very fierce defender of asylum. Technical political crimes are not allowed extradition. Need to avoid even airspace of countries. Chelsea Manning had 35 year sentence, huge deterrent. WikiLeaks person immediately flew to Hong Kong, Sarah. Educaran and Sarah got a laissez pass, UN approved free pass to Ecuador. Sarah didn't sleep.

Results: HTTPs, signal app, ACLU sued and won, NSA needs to warrant phone records, apple goes encryption first along with others.

Privacy back in discussion. Country citizens outraged. Restrictions to NSA. Gdpr sees people are data subjects that own the data they create instead of people who collect it. Privacy is championed by those born after 9/11. "if we act now, our children might not be able to do so. Then they and their children will be trapped. Each generation forced to leave under data soectur of this one". Predictions from data and ai don't make sense. If used to identify is, used to victimized us.

He lives a fairly normal life with his wife now in Russia apartments. People barely recognize him. Brakes around to the world to talk.