Permanent Record (Young Readers Edition) by Edward Snowden

Permanent Record (Young Readers Edition) by Edward Snowden

Author:Edward Snowden
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. (BYR)


* * *

In the midst of my EPICSHELTER work, the PTC hosted a conference on China, and I was asked to make a presentation. To prepare, I started pulling everything off the NSA network (and off the CIA network, to which I still had access), trying to read every top secret report I could find about what the Chinese were doing online.

What I read were the technical details of China’s surveillance of private communications—an accounting of the mechanisms and machinery required for the constant collection, storage, and analysis of the billions of daily telephone and internet communications of over a billion people. Essentially, China was spying on the private lives of its own citizens. At first I was so impressed by the system’s achievement that I almost forgot to be appalled by its totalitarian controls.

But there were certain aspects of what I was reading that disturbed me. I was reminded that if something can be done, it probably will be done, and possibly already has been. There was simply no way for America to have so much information about what the Chinese were doing without having done some of the very same things itself. What China was doing publicly to its own citizens, America might be—could be—doing secretly to the world.

And although you should hate me for it, I have to say that at the time I did my best to ignore my concerns. The distinctions were still fairly clear to me. China’s system was intended to keep its citizens in and America out. The American systems were invisible and purely defensive. Understood this way, the US surveillance model was perfectly okay with me.

But in the sleepless days that followed, some dim suspicion still stirred in my mind. Long after I gave my China briefing, I couldn’t help but keep digging around.



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