If you’re looking to get straight to the meat of what Snowden has to share, feel free to jump to Part 2 (page 105) of the book. All the preceding stuff is just that, preceding stuff: family history going back to Colonial times, genetic propensity toward serving his country, 9/11, and so on.
But the system, that’s what is of importance here. Snowden had a front row seat to the construction of an unconstitutional, all-seeing U.S. government collection of every digital transaction made by every American citizen since, roughly, 2011. Being a systems admin with both CIA and NSA clearance, Snowden was presented with facts forcing him to choose between continuing to collect a paycheck and shrugging his shoulders to the readily apparent abuses or… or he could blow up his life, his relationships and risk a lifetime of imprisonment. I’m glad he made the choice he did and I applaud him for his sacrifice. And I’m also sorry that I haven’t paid more attention to this story.
Here’s the boiled down version: the attacks of 9/11 — for which the blame was laid at the feet of a communication breakdown within the intelligence community — just happened to correspond with exponential increases in computing power, computer storage and the percentages of our lives that were being conducted online. The U.S. government capitalized on this confluence of events. Beyond flatly lying about the existence of such a system to capture data without warrants, the government changed the very definitions of “searching” and “seizing.” Nothing would be searched without a warrant but every bit of communication that happened in the digital realm would be stored. Not seized. Oh, no. Heavens no. That would be unconstitutional! Just stored. And searched when needed.
Right.
And there you have an authoritarian regime’s dream.
I guess it’s time to figure out how to configure an anonymous Tor server.
This is worth a read. Go track down a copy at your nearest library here: http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1121593585
ReMarkable 