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Books

Edward Snowden Memoir To Reveal Whistleblower's Secrets (theguardian.com) 104

After multiple books and films about his decision to leak the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history, whistleblower Edward Snowden is set to tell his side of the story in a memoir, Permanent Record. From a report: Out on 17 September, the book will be published in more than 20 countries and will detail how and why the former CIA agent and NSA contractor decided to reveal the US government's plans for mass surveillance around the world and in the US -- which included monitoring phone calls, text messages and emails. UK publisher Macmillan said the book would see him "bringing the reader along as he helps to create this system of mass surveillance, and then experiences the crisis of conscience that led him to try to bring it down." Snowden's story has been already been tackled on film and in books. He was portrayed by actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the Oliver Stone film Snowden, which was adapted from Guardian journalist Luke Harding's book The Snowden Files. Journalist Glenn Greenwald, the source to whom he leaked his explosive story, recounted in his memoir No Place to Hide how he went to Hong Kong in 2013 to meet an anonymous source who claimed to have evidence of government spying. Snowden was also the subject of the 2014 documentary Citizenfour, directed by Laura Poitras, and the 2016 play Wild, a fictionalised take on his story.
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Edward Snowden Memoir To Reveal Whistleblower's Secrets

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  • Snowden (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SirAstral ( 1349985 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @01:55PM (#59024184)

    How do to the right thing and have everyone hate you for you it.

    And people wonder why their asses are getting shot off by their own governments ha ha ha!!!

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I don't think "everyone hates him" anyway, and nobody shot at him to my knowledge... maybe stop lying, hahaha?

      • Yea, I keep forgetting that asylum vacations are the perfect getaway for a relaxing time these days.

        • by Anonymous Coward

          Do you have a shooting to report, or were you lying about that?

        • I would suggest not drinking the tea in Russia.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Doing the right thing rarely gets you a lot of fans. The very need for doing the right thing is often created by a lot of people doing the wrong thing or supporting it in the first place.

    • "(or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter; even if it means being smeared as a traitor by the propagandized and the mockingbird press."

      Ok I added that last part, but it should be the

    • Snowden pointed out American hypocrisy. Yes, this makes us look bad and Russia likes it when we do this to ourselves. That's a good reason to stop being hypocrites, it's not a good reason to shoot the messenger.

    • by trolman ( 648780 ) *
      The criminal hackers seem pretty well off now that they have the same computer tools that the military uses.
  • by shanen ( 462549 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @02:17PM (#59024282) Homepage Journal

    Interesting coincidence that just now I'm reading a different book entitled No Place to Hide , though I read the one about Snowden a few years ago. Though O'Harrow's book is covering many of the same topics, it's a pre-Snowden book (from 2005) and the perspective is quite different, though the context is eerily similar.

    It seems like every book I read these days has to be contextualized within an epoch, and the epochs are getting shorter and shorter. The big divide in O'Harrow's book is probably pre- and post-9/11, but I just read an anti-google book called Search & Destroy that seems almost hilarious in the post-Trump epoch. Actually, almost every American president of my lifetime seems to create a new epoch... But not just a local problem. Recently read The Future is History and Three Stations , books involving Russia, where the critical epoch divider is the arrival of Putin. Contrast Three Stations with Gorky Park by the same author...

    Anyway, at this point my theory is that Snowden has mostly become irrelevant. He revealed some gigantic problems, but now he's just some sort of pawn. Maybe Snowden's main significance now is that he proves Putin can offer "sanctuary" to anyone he "likes", but I'm pretty sure this book will not explain why. Of course it's too soon for 'history' to assess the significance of Snowden's actions, but I sure don't see much evidence of a new dawn of respect for each individual's privacy. Per my sig, I naturally think freedom is mortally wounded, and I suspect our beloved computers were the murder weapon.

    • It wasn't the computers themselves. Everything went downhill when we started to connect them together into networks.

      • (There is some pertinent quote from the "Battlestar Galactica" remake about this but I couldn't find it.)

      • Captain Adama, is that you?
      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        It wasn't the computers themselves. Everything went downhill when we started to connect them together into networks.

        Interesting. Is that another bug in Slashdot? Your [Narcocide's] interesting reply was not reported to me. I spotted it by accident.

        I sort of agree with you, though I see it more as a kind of inevitable development triggered by the development of computers. The drive to improve the computers resulted in rapid developments of digitization, and the network communications are implicit. Or maybe it's more of an infinite loop problem? Bigger computers need more data calling for faster networks that then call for

    • my theory is that Snowden has mostly become irrelevant. He revealed some gigantic problems, but now he's just some sort of pawn

      My theory is that's always been the case.

      He's publicly said enough about his actions to draw some conclusions. He openly broke protocols, rules, and laws to expand his access without authorization. He went to great lengths to bypass oversight, to alert the American public about... how critical oversight is?

      In the world of sensitive information, he personifies the textbook enemy. He's the guy who breaks the rules to do what he wants. He's the guy threatening American security. He's the guy who put his own op

      • by shanen ( 462549 )

        Interesting reply, again not reported to me. If I were a conspiracy theorist, I'd suspect someone is hacking the Slashdot?

        However, your [Sarten-X's] points are also interleaved in a confusing way, leading to a conclusion that I mostly reject. When it comes to such trivia as protecting our Constitutional rights, I think the EFF and the ACLU are accomplishing nothing and the best congress-critters are accomplishing even less, while the worst ones are doing excellently bad work in making the bad situation wors

        • In short, I think Snowden does a great job getting attention briefly, but his history prevents him from persuading anyone who can actually change how things work. It's like if Adolf Hitler tried to improve American agricultural practices. Regardless of the merit of his ideas, their presentation is always tainted by the character of the person presenting them, and that person is so far removed from the nuance of the problem that their solutions seem naive*.

          I doubt that Snowden was ever directly manipulated p

          • by shanen ( 462549 )

            Again, I partly agree but see large areas of disagreement. I think the most important one involves the value of paranoia to the "establishment" in terms of increasing self-censorship. Much better to shut up and isolate your opponents before they say anything. No pesky First Amendment squabbles.

            Which reminds me of the ineffectiveness of the ACLU (and the EFF). Much of what hurt the ACLU's reputation were their highly principled defenses of people with bad reputations and worse principles. You dragged the Naz

  • by cybersquid ( 24605 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @03:10PM (#59024644) Homepage

    ... for not pardoning Snowden.

    He is a hero who is being punished for protecting us all. The fact that he is pursued as a criminal says very bad things about the U.S. government.

    IMHO Snowden should be put in charge of a government agency tasked with preventing this sort of spying on citizens.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      ... for not pardoning Snowden.

      He is a hero who is being punished for protecting us all. The fact that he is pursued as a criminal says very bad things about the U.S. government.

      IMHO Snowden should be put in charge of a government agency tasked with preventing this sort of spying on citizens.

      First off, what crime was Snowden convicted of? He hasn't been found guilty in a US court of law, so he cannot be pardoned.

      The only thing Obama could do is ask to stop his pursuit, but that's only a suggestion - it's up

      • by Lost Race ( 681080 ) on Thursday August 01, 2019 @06:09PM (#59025878)
        It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool....

        First off, what crime was Snowden convicted of? He hasn't been found guilty in a US court of law, so he cannot be pardoned.

        Ford pardoned Nixon.

        The only thing Obama could do is ask to stop his pursuit, but that's only a suggestion - it's up to the Judicial branch to actually catch him, charge him and convict him.

        The Judicial branch neither catches nor charges.

        All Obama could do, and all Trump can do is offer a suggestion to the justice department.

        The Justice department is part of the Executive branch, under the authority of the President.

        And since Snowden is residing in a country without a extradition treaty with the US, he can't be arrested either.

        He would be out of there a millisecond after being pardoned.

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      Snowden is a liar, and just published data to feed his ego and try to leverage it for money.

      Nothing more. He is no different then every other sucker who has been Honeypotted. Something we talked about when this first happened. You know, those of us who keep up on foreign affairs that were screaming about the Russia computer interfere for 25 years.

      What he released showed a very clear thing: The US was doing exactly what is said it was with diplomats, and that we were are good actor.

      • “The reason I’m asking the question is, having served on the committee now for a dozen years, I don’t really know what a dossier is in this context. So what I wanted to see is if you could give me a yes or no answer to the question, does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

        Director of National Intelligence JAMES CLAPPER: “No, sir.”

        Just goes to show what side of history you're on.

        • by trolman ( 648780 ) *
          Clapper the bold faced liar right in front of the US Congress and everyone. Something that I will never forget.
          • It was a powerful lesson for me as well. It led to the conclusion that any proper oversight of these powerful intelligence agencies by congress is also a joke.

            Clapper then goes on to publish a book with "hard truth" and "facts" in the title. There's no end to the amount of gaslighting that the likes of Clapper and the previous poster will attempt, just as scammers know that there will always be enough gullible people to take the bait to make the attempt worthwhile.
             

    • by geekoid ( 135745 )

      for not pardoning Snowden.

      You are really, really, really, really, fucking stupid.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      There is a very real psychological change that people undergo when they become leaders. Their version of "us and them" is fellow leaders vs commoners.

      In their world, it is improper for commoners to make accusations of leaders, even if those accusations are true.

      It doesn't matter how right Snowden was, and it doesn't matter how wrong his superiors were. Snowden is a commoner who betrayed his superiors, and that is an unforgivable sin.

      So, Obama did not forgive it, neither will Trump, nor would Hilary have.

    • I appreciate what Snowden has done for the freedom of the American people, but demanding that he gets pardoned before any trial, conviction, or even indictment paints him as an arrogant prick. Obama has sent every message regarding possible pardon, but stopping short of just saying I will pardon you like Trump "threatened" in case of his corrupt associates. And by now that ship has sailed away, Trump or any other non-libertarian republican certainly will not expend his political capital on pardoning Snowden

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Obama showed his true colors when he did not. Just another man of the evil establishment, after all, if better mannered and smarter than the current used-car salesman type.

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