Permanent Record

Mon ressenti : ce livre conforte une croyance profonde que j'ai développée ces dernières années : voir la loi comme outil pour te rassurer que tout ira bien dans ta vie (parce que tu comprends, c'est validé par une loi), c'est comme te dire que signer un contrat va te protéger des abus de la personne en face de toi.

=> ça fonctionne que si tu as confiance en les personnes qui créent les lois (qu'elles vont veiller aux intérêts de la majorité et pas juste, disons, les riches, hein - merci les lobbys), et surtout que ces personnes les feront effectivement respecter, que ce soit auprès des organismes privés ou publics.

Les lois qui viennent légitimer les opérations de surveillance massive (localement ou non), on pourrait bien s'en passer, merci. Au mieux, elles empêchent rien à la surveillance (ce qui est un problème), au pire, nos impôts servent à payer le salaire de ceux qui les rédigent, vote, etc.

Moyen non ?

Mon ressenti : ce livre conforte une croyance profonde que j'ai développée ces dernières années : voir la loi comme outil pour te rassurer que tout ira bien dans ta vie (parce que tu comprends, c'est validé par une loi), c'est comme te dire que signer un contrat va te protéger des abus de la personne en face de toi.

=> ça fonctionne que si tu as confiance en les personnes qui créent les lois (qu'elles vont veiller aux intérêts de la majorité et pas juste, disons, les riches, hein - merci les lobbys), et surtout que ces personnes les feront effectivement respecter, que ce soit auprès des organismes privés ou publics.

Les lois qui viennent légitimer les opérations de surveillance massive (localement ou non), on pourrait bien s'en passer, merci. Au mieux, elles empêchent rien à la surveillance (ce qui est un problème), au pire, nos impôts servent à payer le salaire de ceux qui les rédigent, vote, etc.

Moyen non ?

Consider, for a moment, living in the feudal age. Your respect and power would've been derived from the amount of land you have. Or, in a capitalist system, it is the money or credibility. Now, consider our time. It is still capitalism. However, a capitalism which is ever-increasingly depending on technologies, most importantly information technology. This is the actual currency for this age. The amount of information you can and have massed and crunched gives you power and wealth according. And, unless you are part of the top-tier of the governments or leading tech industries, you are the mine or the factory of data. All our virtual assistants, IoT devices, smart devices, websites we visit, digital services we buy are sending our data without our consent to the vendors, and often to the government.
Do you find this unethical? Well... if you do, then meet Edward Snowden (you may probably already have), a martyr of the information age.
Yes, he is alive. He's a martyr in the sense that for his ethical action, a cruel punishment awaits in his country, and the country has tried to disenfranchise and defame in every possible way. To a patriot to the marrow of his bone, a person who found his allegiance to the people of his country opposed to the ever-eavesdropping government, this exile is maybe more than being murdered in many ways.
Permanent Record is Snowden's autobiography. However, more than an autobiography, this book is about the things that define him. In his own word:

The reason you’re reading this book is that I did a dangerous thing for a man in my position: I decided to tell the truth. I collected internal IC documents that gave evidence of the US government’s lawbreaking and turned them over to journalists, who vetted and published them to a scandalized world. This book is about what led up to that decision, the moral and ethical principles that informed it, and how they came to be—which means that it’s also about my life.

His prose is mature, concise, to the point yet emotional. So much so that, apart from the content, it has a very high level of literary value. The clarity of his thought, the amount of conviction he holds, I think, is the most important aspect of this book. He can actually make you see things from his position, feel what he felt, his moment of truth, his anxieties and fears, his courage and sacrifice - willing yet shaking his very core.
Content-wise, this book is invaluable. It allows readers a peek into the large mechanism, through which big brother is watching you. Apart from the technicalities, you may find Snowden's views on personal freedom, privacy, democracy, authority and human rights very accurate and logical.