52 pages • 1 hour read
Edward SnowdenPermanent Record
Edward SnowdenNonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Permanent Records
A motif that Snowden returns to again and again, the permanent record gives the book its title and plays on the themes of surveillance and a lifelong rap sheet. At various stages, Snowden encounters different forms of a permanent record, some more serious than others. As he grows and his views become better informed, the permanent record evolves from its original state—an idle threat from his teacher—to a description for user data collected on every single person in the United States of America— without probable cause, stored and accessible forever.
By referencing the familiar idea of a permanent school record—an urban myth which is repeated to generation after generation, to the point of being modern folklore—Snowden creates a smart analogy for what the NSA has done with mass surveillance. At first, he introduces the idea as an ironic offhand comment, a way of keeping a wayward student in line. By the time Snowden begins to work in the intelligence agencies, he discovers that the permanent record is horrifying real. Just as a computer logs every minor action performed on the computer itself, the modern computers employed by the NSA monitor everything a user does at all times. This metadata becomes a modern, clandestine permanent record, one which the citizen does not even know exists, and one which poses a danger to a free society.
The ultimate irony for Snowden is that his permanent record doesn’t exist in the bowels of the NSA. Whenever people search his name online, he will be forever associated with one single act. Whether Snowden has altered his permanent record for a measurable result remains unclear. For Snowden, however, the very act of making the alteration demonstrates control over what he considers an authoritarian tool.
Rubik’s Cubes
Snowden often plays with a Rubik’s cube and uses it as a conversation starter to build trust with the NSA’s security guards. Popular during the 1980s, the toy is a puzzle that allows the user to move around colored blocks until all of the colors are the same on each side. To solve the cube, a user can learn set patterns and techniques that make solving the puzzle possible in increasingly quick times. In many ways, the cube is a metaphor for Snowden’s infatuation with systems and his determination to manipulate and break them.
By his own admission, Rubik’s cubes are ever present in Snowden’s life. When Snowden is stressed or anxious, he thinks about the cubes and how to solve them. Although many people fumble with the cubes, the actual techniques can be learned and practiced. His commitment turns the device from a novelty into a hobby, something at which Snowden can train and improve while distracting himself from painful thoughts, such as his discharge from the Army or his ever-increasing awareness of mass surveillance. The repeated techniques soothe him and help him demonstrate control over a system in chaotic moments. From his childhood to his jobs at the intelligence agencies to his time in Hong Kong, his thoughts always drift to the toy.
When he sneaks SD cards out of the NSA facility, he employs a Rubik’s cube to achieve his goal. At first, he does this with classic subterfuge. He hides the tiny card under one of the colored faces on the cube, sneaking it into the facility in disguise. As he becomes more adept at sneaking the storage devices into the facility, the cubes take on a new purpose. He pretends to adopt the cube as an affectation, as a way to express his introverted personality. The trick convinces the guards, to whom he talks about the cubes, switching their focus from him to the toys. The toy demonstrates his advanced hacking skills: He can now take on a system as complex as the human mind.
Computers
The mainstays in the story of Edward Snowden’s life are computers. They are with him from his early childhood up until his exile in Russia, allowing him to stay in touch with the rest of his family when he cannot return to America. In Snowden’s childhood, the computer is the gateway to another world, a free and liberating educational tool which shapes him as a person. By the end of the book, Snowden has become a public herald of the dangers posed by computers in the hands of the wrong people.
From the moment his father arrives home with a Commodore 64, Snowden is hooked. He stays up at night, not playing with the computer but watching his father play from two rooms away. His obsession grows when the family gets their own personal computer, to the extent that he monopolizes the use of the system. His grades begin to suffer and, when his parents divorce, Snowden worries that his overuse of the computer may have been the reason. The ideas introduced to him by games, the internet, and by taking apart the system and learning how it functions become the formative moments of his childhood. Everything he does in life is based on this early relationship to the computer, one of love and respect. The computer, particularly when connected to the internet, becomes almost a surrogate parent.
The more Snowden learns about how the government uses computers, the less he feels he can trust them. As an adult, he meticulously wipes and encrypts computer files. When he sees an internet-enabled refrigerator, he realizes just how ubiquitous connected devices, and thus the risk of improper data collection, has become. When he asks a journalist to put his smart phone in a mini fridge, he seems to feel betrayed by the technology he used to idolize.
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