PDF Summary:Permanent Record, by Edward Snowden
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1-Page PDF Summary of Permanent Record
In 2013, whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the existence of STELLARWIND, the US government’s mass surveillance program. Until Snowden revealed the program, the US government was recording the phone and computer activities of nearly everyone in the world.
In Permanent Record, Snowden explains how he became involved with the government, how he learned about the mass surveillance program, and how he ultimately made the decision to speak up—a decision that would change his life, and the lives of everyone who uses the Internet, forever.
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Because most of the Internet is based in the US or owned by American companies, STELLARWIND affected nearly everyone in the world.
Ed Returns to the US
Initially, Ed decided not to do anything about what he’d discovered. He and his girlfriend moved back to the US from Japan and Ed began a stressful job as a solutions consultant with Dell.
Around the same time, clouds and smart home devices were becoming popular. People were happy—and sometimes even willing to pay—to share their data with companies. Ed wondered if anyone would even care about government mass surveillance if they were so willingly sharing their data with corporations.
Ed had his first epileptic seizure and had to take a leave of absence from work. While he was recovering, he spent much of his time watching news coverage. He wondered if mass surveillance was a legitimate problem, given the scale of some of the conflict and violence taking place around the world. However, he couldn’t help but notice that while people’s causes and governments differed, the main thing everyone wanted was to be free from oppression and censorship.
Ed Builds Heartbeat
In the hopes of better managing his epilepsy, Ed took a new job with the NSA in Hawaii, which his doctors had recommended for its relaxed lifestyle. While there, he decided to learn more about the mass surveillance program. He knew he wouldn’t be able to decide what to do about it until he understood it fully.
Ed created a program called Heartbeat. Heartbeat searched the intelligence agencies “readboards” (news blogs) and pulled documents. It then created a feed tailored to an agent’s office, clearance, and projects. Ed had access to everyone’s documents and used Heartbeat to learn more about the mass surveillance program without arousing suspicion.
Ed Decides to Act
After reviewing the Constitution in 2012, Ed decided he had to act. STELLARWIND violated the Fourth Amendment. He decided to get in touch with journalists and share the top secret documents that proved the existence of the US’s mass surveillance program.
If Ed was caught, he’d be arrested, and the NSA had plenty of security. However, Ed had spent his entire career learning to anonymize himself on the Internet and he’d built a lot of the systems the NSA used, so he knew how to exploit them. Additionally, as a systems administrator, Ed also had access to reports about people who’d been caught selling secrets, so he had some idea of how to avoid detection.
Ed had already found the documents he needed to leak through Heartbeat, but the NSA logs everything that’s done on their network-connected computers, so Ed couldn’t organize or make copies of the files without attracting attention. He switched to the night shift and invented a compatibility-testing project that gave him a legitimate reason to transfer Heartbeat files onto older computers that weren’t connected to the NSA’s main networks. On these old computers, Ed compressed and encrypted the documents and transferred them onto small SD cards. Then he smuggled the SD cards out of the NSA in his cheek, in his socks, or behind the panels of a Rubik’s Cube.
Connecting with journalists was also a challenge. Ed decided to start with Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, two journalists who were on the intelligence agencies’ to-watch list. To get in touch with them anonymously, Ed drove around the island of Hawaii and connected to strangers’ wifi connections. He used encrypted email and a computer that deleted everything he did on it every time it was shut down.
Ed Uses XKEYSCORE
Ed wanted to see how mass surveillance technology works in practice, so he took a job at the NSA’s National Threat Operations Center. There, he used XKEYSCORE, a program that allowed him to view almost everything anyone had ever done on the Internet. He learned about what porn people watched and saw pictures of their families. He found it incredibly invasive.
Ed continued talking to the journalists. He had trouble setting up a meeting in advance because he couldn’t give them a date or place. He had to find a country that had free internet but also wouldn't be so intimidated by the US that it would immediately give Ed up when the story broke.
Ed Blows the Whistle
Ed met with journalists in Hong Kong in spring 2013 and the mass surveillance program was revealed to the public. Ed decided to reveal his own identity as the whistleblower so he could do so on his own terms. (If the government revealed him first, they’d try to discredit him and shift the focus from their illegal activities to Ed’s.) Ed’s family and girlfriend back in the US were harassed by the government—his girlfriend went through long interrogations and was followed by the FBI 24/7.
The US government charged Ed under the Espionage Act for divulging top secret documents and called for his extradition. The government of Hong Kong wouldn’t protect him and he tried to get to Ecuador with the help of WikiLeaks, an organization that publishes leaks and classified information. Ed couldn’t fly direct and ended up stranded in Russia when the US canceled his passport.
Ed was stuck in a Russian airport for forty days before the Russian government granted him temporary asylum. His girlfriend moved to Russia to join him and they were married. Ed still lives in Russia as of 2019, where he works for the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
Ed’s disclosures resulted in:
- Public outcry and national conversations about surveillance.
- Congress’s investigation of the NSA.
- Court cases about the NSA’s programs. Some of the cases restricted the NSA’s future activity.
- The USA Freedom Act, which forbids “bulk collection” (mass surveillance) of American’s phone records.
- Companies and individuals using tighter security, such as encryption.
- EU whistleblower and privacy protections, notably the General Data Protection Regulation, which states that data isn’t owned by the person who collects it; it’s owned by the person it’s about.
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