The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man Author: Luke Harding | Language: English | ISBN:
B00I1ZKA56 | Format: PDF
The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man Description
IT BEGAN WITH A TANTALIZING, ANONYMOUS EMAIL: “I AM A SENIOR MEMBER OF THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY.”
What followed was the most spectacular intelligence breach ever, brought about by one extraordinary man. Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.
In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden’s astonishing story—from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story—touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector—while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative—and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.
From the Trade Paperback edition.- File Size: 1231 KB
- Print Length: 354 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0804173524
- Publisher: Vintage (February 7, 2014)
- Sold by: Random House LLC
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00I1ZKA56
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,272 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Diplomacy - #2
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in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Accounts > Espionage
- #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Politics & Government > International & World Politics > Diplomacy - #2
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Biographies & Memoirs > True Accounts > Espionage - #3
in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > True Accounts > Espionage
The NSA walks into a bar and says, "Give me all your drinks. I need to figure out which one to order." That joke came out of the new book, THE SNOWDEN FILES: THE INSIDE STORY OF THE WORLD'S MOST WANTED MAN by British journalist Luke Harding. It is one of a great many thought-provoking passages in this timely and well-written book, in addition to being probably the funniest.
Probably everything you've heard about Edward Snowden factually is true, but there is more besides that, and this book puts together the saga in a common-sense way that tells us just about everything there is to know, at least as of now. It is true that Snowden bootstrapped a career based on a mere GED and love of computers through several different agencies, and was living in Hawaii with his girlfriend at the time of his disappearance, bearing with him an astonishing amount of top-secret NSA files. (It is also true that he was enroute to earning close to $200,000 a year had he gone on doing what his colleagues did, which was shut up and ignore the huge credibility gap between what the NSA told Congress it was doing, and what it was actually doing.) It is true that Snowden holed up in a hotel room in the Kowloon borough of Hong Kong and started disseminating the information among two renegade Americans, a political activist and a documentary filmmaker, who had taken up residence in Brazil for security reasons. It is true Snowden got out of Hong Kong in the nick of time, headed for Russia, and that if the NSA had been as clever with interdiction as it was with "hoovering" up vast realms of telecommunications data, he'd likely have been captured.
Just finished reading this superbly written account by the Guardian journalist, Luke Harding, who really knows how to master a large collection of facts and opinion and transmit them in a way that's a delight to read. As I'd followed this story from the start in the Guardian, the story was familiar to me, but the book still filled in very many details that I hadn't known. One of the things that really stood out for me occurs during a discussion of Snowden's slowly developing decision to go public: "Snowden said he hadn't voted for Obama in 2008 but had 'believed' in his promises ... He had intended to 'disclose' what he had found out, but decided to wait and see following Obama's election. What did happen, he said, was profoundly disillusioning: 'He continued with the policies of his predecessor'." (P 108)
So there you have it. Remember all that "Change you can believe in", all that "audacity of hope", the "Yes we can"? It's tempting to ask will anyone ever again get taken in by that kind of fraudulent rhetoric, but of course they will as time goes on, as people forget, as new generations come along.
Had post-election Obama done as pre-election Obama promised, we'd never have had to hear the name Edward Snowden, at least not in this connection. Harding reminds us of a few Obama promises: "No more illegal wiretapping of American citizens. No more National Security Letters to spy on American Citizens who are not suspected of a crime. No more tracking citizens who do no more than protest a misguided war. No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient." (P 98)
(Before I forget to mention it, there's a really detailed index, 12 pages, very useful indeed. I just used it to look up those quotes.
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