Permanent Record

The Snowden family has historic connections to the sea: His mother’s family traces her ancestry back to the Mayflower, and members of his family have fought in every war in American history. With his father often away with the Coast Guard, Snowden and his sister are primarily raised by his mother. She drives the children to the library and gives them math challenges; at his grandmother’s house nearby, he eats pecans, studies Greek and Roman mythology, and reads stories of King Arthur. As he grows up, he comes to view reality as “nearly always messier and less flattering than we might want it to be, but also in some strange way often richer than myth” (22).

On December 25, 1989, a Nintendo appears in the Snowden household. Since Edward is only allowed to rent a new game when he finishes a book, he begins to read shorter books. When the Nintendo breaks one day, Snowden resolves to fix it. After dismantling and reassembling the console, it no longer turns on, which Snowden worries will disappoint his engineer father. Lon arrives home, patiently explains the value of analyzing why things went wrong, and takes his son to his workplace lab, where they reassemble the console. In the lab, Snowden discovers real, high-power computers for the first time. Lon teaches his son to use a text editor and some basic code. Over the next decade or so, Snowden learns coding and becomes “good enough to be dangerous” (27). 

Just before Snowden’s ninth birthday, the family moves from North Carolina to Crofton, Maryland. His surname is closely associated with the region, and he sees it everywhere, although the new area feels like another planet. Snowden is bullied at his new school. Classmates mock his Southern accent, so he stops speaking in class until he can rid himself of his drawl. His grades plummet.

The surrounding area—the Beltway—is almost entirely populated by those who either “serve in the US government or work for one of the companies that do business with the US government” (30). For Snowden’s parents, it’s a step up: His father is promoted within the Coast Guard, and his mother starts a job as a clerk, working for an independent insurance and benefits association that works with the NSA. Both of his parents have Top Secret clearances and his mother has a full-scope polygraph, a higher-level check for civilians. Almost all families in the area have a member who works for the government in some capacity. It is, Snowden suggests “one enormous boom-or-bust company town” (32), and the majority of people (and their children) do not discuss work at home.

Just after the family moves to Crofton, Lon buys the family’s first real desktop computer. From the first moment it appears, young Edward and the computer are inseparable. He plays increasingly complex games and begins to explore the internet. Access to the internet is the “big bang or Precambrian explosion” (35) of Snowden’s generation, changing everyone’s lives.

Spending every possible moment online causes Snowden to fall asleep in school, but the internet quenches his unending thirst for knowledge. Even when grounded, he sneaks downstairs late at night to use the computer. The internet offers him the freedom to invent an entirely new online persona. Snowden joins forums and bulletin boards, learning how to build his own computer. The responses provided to his panicky and uninformed questions are polite and thorough.

Although he reveals his age to online friends (making them, if anything, even more encouraging of his hobbies), he never reveals his name, finding anonymity to be “one of the greatest joys of these platforms” (38). Anonymity mutes the arguments and bile that occasionally spill into discussions; changing identity on a whim is liberating. Playing Ultima Online (a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG) allows for constant exploration and reinvention.

Online play, however, leads to issues: The home phone bills become exorbitant, and outside callers can’t get through. Snowden and his sister bicker about phone access, so much so that his parents install a second phone line and switch to flat-fee unlimited internet access. 

All teenagers, Snowden suggests, are hackers. Adults wish to impose conformity on teenagers, who wish to maintain their privacy. Snowden is frustrated by the myriad rules which govern his life. He grows more interested in politics, and recognizes that democracy rarely extends to the classroom, where teachers wield authoritarian power. He becomes convinced that school is “an illegitimate system [that does not] recognize any legitimate dissent” (43).

To resist, Snowden develops a hacker’s mindset; wherever rules exist, he learns to understand and exploit them—to hack the system. He notes how the human ability to recognize patterns and rely on assumptions can be exploited.

By the time he is 13, Snowden decides to spend less time at school. He studies the syllabus of each class and determines the bare minimum needed for a passing grade. He stops doing homework and, when a teacher asks about this, he reveals his formula to the class; the next day, the teacher changes the syllabus and thwarts his plan. The teacher takes him aside and says that he has potential but needs to “start thinking about [his] permanent record” (45). Concurrently, he learns conventional computer hacking. The more he teaches himself to exploit computers, the more he worries “over the consequences of trusting the wrong machine” (46).

Snowden’s first hack reinforces this fear. He visits the website of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear research facility, and finds a significant security issue. He accesses the facility’s folder directory through a traversal known as “dirwalking” or “directory walking,” uncovering confidential office materials and employee information. Worried about “mushroom clouds on the horizon” (47), he tells an adult.

Snowden emails the site’s webmaster but nothing changes. He leaves a voicemail message with his name and number. Weeks pass. Then, the phone rings. His mother answers. As she worries, he calmly answers the caller’s questions and is told that the problem has been fixed. As the phone call finishes, the IT representative offers Snowden a job. Snowden reveals his age and passes the phone back to his mother. The man praises her son enough that she does not care that dinner is burning. 

Snowden spends large swathes of high school asleep, exhausted by his extracurricular computer activity. He confesses that, at the time, he was “a touch too enamored of the idea that life’s most important questions are binary” (50). This focus changes during an English class, when he is asked to produce an autobiographical statement; he turns nothing in. Life at the time is too confusing. His parents divorce and sell their house, and his sister departs for college. Edward turns inward and worries that his behavior caused the divorce.

Snowden feigns confidence and self-sufficiency when in company; he stops being “Eddie” and starts referring to himself as “Ed,” which he believes to be more adult. Snowden is drawn toward mentors other than his parents. At the start of his sophomore year, he is diagnosed with infectious mononucleosis. As he recovers, his low energy allows him to do little but play games, and his parents compete to bring him “the cooler game, the newer game” (52).

The thought of catching up on missed schoolwork fills Snowden with dread. He receives a letter informing him that he will need to repeat the year. The letter shocks him out of his depressive slump, and he searches for a way out of this predicament—a hack. He gets accepted to a local community college and, after the school approves, attends two days a week. The youngest in the class, he becomes both “a mascot-like object of novelty and a discomfiting presence” (53), but the classes interest him. Eventually, Snowden gets his General Education Diploma (GED).

Snowden considers the English assignment he never handed in; he says people like him rarely feel comfortable writing about themselves. He has spent so much time craving anonymity, both online and in the intelligence community; it’s a “human encryption,” locking away his true identity behind a manufactured, uninteresting self. His family life taught him to keep secrets and how to navigate an interrogation. Although people are always in flux, an autobiographical statement is, by its very nature, static. 

Starting at age 16, Snowden lives on his own. He finds a new group of friends at college; they meet in Japanese classes, bonding over a newly discovered appreciation for anime. One friend, a 25-year-old web designer named Mae, introduces Snowden to freelance work. She hires him and they work out of her house. The two bid for web design projects, for which they receive low pay and no credit for their work. Mae handles the graphic design while Snowden handles the coding.

Though Snowden is smitten with Mae, she has a husband named Norm. He begins to think about his future and knows he will require IT credentials for the best jobs. He attends a Microsoft certification course; such credentials are broken into tiers, the highest of which is a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, “the guaranteed meal ticket” (59). Snowden ups his hours with Mae to pay the high course costs.

Rushing to her house one day to begin work, he hears a radio story about a plane crash in New York. Though distracted by this news, he and Mae begin to work. Norm phones and tells them that a second plane has hit the World Trade Center’s South Tower. They stop work and Snowden drives home in a daze, caught in a flood of traffic as the NSA evacuates. After 9/11, additional security in the area prevents him from driving to Mae’s house. The aftermath drives a wedge between them that never truly heals. 

Snowden reflects on 9/11; almost 3,000 people died, a staggering loss. In the course of America’s response, however, Snowden says that over 1 million people have died. He believes the secret policies, laws, courts, and wars that followed 9/11 have traumatized people both at home and abroad. As a person both employed by the intelligence agencies and forced into exile after he exposed mass surveillance, Snowden believes agencies are often wrong, and America has transformed into a security state. In an attempt to understand this, he returns to considering the aftermath of 9/11.

As he drives home from Mae’s house, Snowden frantically calls family members but cannot get through. He finally speaks to his mother, but she provides few reassurances. All of their family, however, emerges unharmed. Snowden notes how quickly Americans divide the world into “us” and “them.” American flags appear everywhere. Targets in the shapes of men in Arab clothing appear at the gun ranges Snowden occasionally visits. Gun and cell phone sales spike. Thousands of spies, desperate to redeem themselves, return to work knowing that they have failed to protect America. Thus, September 12, 2001, was “the first day of a new era” (66). Instead of reinforcing democratic values, America goes to war. Snowden describes his unquestioning support for the invasion of Afghanistan as the greatest regret of his life. He accepts the media narrative of liberation and forgets his naturally anti-institutional politics from his formative years as a hacker.

Snowden, who wants to be a part of something, wonders how his tech-orientated training can serve the state. Most intelligence agencies require a traditional college degree rather than IT accreditation, but he thinks they may waive these requirements for military veterans. Aged 20, Snowden joins the Army. His mother cries. He writes his father a note and slips it below the door: “I’m sorry, Dad […] but this is vital for my personal growth” (67). 

Snowden scores high enough on the Army entrance exams to potentially come out of training as a Special Forces sergeant. This training track, X-Ray, screens for recruits with the best fitness, intelligence, and linguistic abilities. Snowden must first complete basic training. He attends Sand Hill in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the drill sergeants shout and abuse the recruits. Snowden is the lightest weight in the platoon, is nicknamed Snowflake, and is frequently paired with the tallest recruit.

“Always dirty and always hurting” (69), the recruits soon find themselves in excellent shape. They run everywhere, chanting while they do so; the only respite comes in the barracks. One exercise calls for the recruits to trek over variegated terrain with only a map, a compass, and their 50-pound rucksacks. While checking the bearings, a snake causes Snowden to lose his footing. He slips and feels excruciating pain but finishes the exercise anyway. Later, he learns that he has stress fractures and that the only way they will heal is with rest. He hobbles back to his barracks, where he is kept separate from the other recruits while he heals. He convalesces with a sweet and innocent young recruit so wracked with homesickness that he is about to go AWOL. Nothing will convince the man not to leave.

A few days later, Snowden learns that his injuries will prevent him from completing basic training. He accepts the offer of an administrative separation, neither an honorable nor dishonorable discharge. As he signs the papers, Snowden recognizes that he has been hacked: The Army will no longer assume responsibility for disability payments. He signs anyway and is allowed to keep the crutches. 

As his pain and depression fade, Snowden begins to understand the degree to which his knack for computers surpasses his peers’. He had assumed this affinity was natural; his short stint in the Army reflected a desire to be praised for more than just his intellect. Although discharge wounds his pride, his confidence grows. He decides that he will serve his country better at an intelligence agency. Such a job requires a security clearance, so he searches for job which will expediate the vetting process.

Although a strong candidate for a clearance, Snowden feels still nervous. His entire family and network of friends are interviewed to make sure that he cannot be compromised or blackmailed. Snowden worries about the “stupid jingoistic things […] and the even stupider misanthropic opinions” (78) he posted online as a teen. Most people of Snowden’s age, he believes, have “that one post that embarrasses them, or that text or email that could get them fired” (79). He thinks about explaining these comments to a man examining his permanent record. He knows he can delete his old posts but chooses not to. He does not want to erase who he once was.

Snowden feels most embarrassed by his online dating profiles, though he met Lindsay Mills through the site HotOrNot, which had a dating component—he rated her a perfect 10, she rated him an eight. They began to talk and eventually arranged a date. Lindsay picked him up and they drove around, having forgotten to make a plan. They talked about everything, including the vetting process.

He hears Lindsay’s voice in his head when he drives to his final interview at the NSA, which includes a polygraph test that he passes. At age 21, Snowden has his security clearance and a girlfriend. Later, she will become his partner and the love of his life.