Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
    Unavailable
    The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
    Unavailable
    The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
    Audiobook10 hours

    The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man

    Written by Luke Harding

    Narrated by Nicholas Guy Smith

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Edward Snowden was a 29-year-old computer genius working for the National Security Agency when he shocked the world by exposing the near-universal mass surveillance programs of the United States government. His whistleblowing has shaken the leaders of nations worldwide, and generated a passionate public debate on the dangers of global monitoring and the threat to individual privacy.

    In a tour de force of investigative journalism that reads like a spy novel, award-winning Guardian reporter Luke Harding tells Snowden’s astonishing story—from the day he left his glamorous girlfriend in Honolulu carrying a hard drive full of secrets, to the weeks of his secret-spilling in Hong Kong, to his battle for asylum and his exile in Moscow. For the first time, Harding brings together the many sources and strands of the story—touching on everything from concerns about domestic spying to the complicity of the tech sector—while also placing us in the room with Edward Snowden himself. The result is a gripping insider narrative—and a necessary and timely account of what is at stake for all of us in the new digital age.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateOct 21, 2014
    ISBN9781101890448
    Unavailable
    The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
    Author

    Luke Harding

    Luke Harding is a journalist, writer, and awardwinning correspondent with the Guardian. He has reported from Delhi, Berlin, and Moscow, and covered wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria. Between 2007 and 2011, he was the Guardian’s Moscow bureau chief. In February 2011, the Kremlin deported him from the country in the first case of its kind since the Cold War. He is the author of several books, most recently the number one New York Times bestseller Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win.

    Related to The Snowden Files

    Related audiobooks

    Espionage For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Snowden Revelations Reconsidered

      Jun 7, 2023

      Ten years ago, an unorthodox reporting team flew from New York to Hong Kong to meet someone claiming to be a spy who was ready to hand over a trove of top-secret documents. The hastily assembled group of journalists comprised the U.S. documentary fil

      10 min read

    • Article

      In 'Permanent Record,' Edward Snowden Says 'Exile Is An Endless Layover'

      Sep 13, 2019

      In his memoir, the former NSA contractor says he believes he has been proven right as the U.S. has amended laws regarding government surveillance. But the government still wants to prosecute him.

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Decade On, Edward Snowden Remains In Russia, Though U.S. Laws Have Changed

      Jun 4, 2023

      A decade ago, we were still exploring the technological wonders of cellphones and other electronic devices. Few were thinking about how they could be used to monitor us. Then came Edward Snowden.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Out Of The Shadows?

      Aug 13, 2020

      It is 14 years since I left the Ministry of Defence Main Building in Whitehall holding one of only a handful of hard copies of the 463-page, three-volume report Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the UK Air Defence Region, codenamed ‘Condign’ by its el

      8 min read

    • Article

      Patriot Or Traitor?

      Dec 23, 2019

      Patriot Or Traitor?
      1 min read

    • Article

      Edward Snowden Tells NPR: 'I Have Been Criticizing The Russian Government'

      Sep 12, 2019

      In an interview with NPR about his memoir, Permanent Record, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden denies any cooperation with Russian intelligence and says he would return if guaranteed a fair trial.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Letters

      Jan 7, 2022

      English class head to Ireland in Brexit twist I’m an English teacher at a German secondary school. For the past 12 years, I’ve taken my A-level class to England for a week-long trip (Big story, Brexit one year on, 31 December). We spent a lot of mone

      3 min read

    • Article

      How 9/11 Created A Spy State

      Sep 10, 2021

      How 9/11 Created A Spy State
      8 min read

    • Article

      Editorial

      Aug 19, 2020

      WHEN THIS ISSUE was planned, COVID-19 was in the distance, nothing but a series of news reports from Asia. For a month, I was corresponding with writers and conducting interviews from France, southern Italy, and London. By early March, it became clea

      2 min read

    • Article

      Into The Breach

      Jun 11, 2022

      Into The Breach
      11 min read

    • Article

      Into The Breach

      Jun 10, 2022

      Into The Breach
      11 min read

    • Article

      Fear This Man

      Jun 1, 2016

      DAVID VIN CENZETTI BUILT A SPYWARE EMPIRE. IS THE ITALIAN MOGUL A CODE BREAKER OR AN ARMS DEALER?

      19 min read

    • Article

      A Machine So Odious | Books

      Nov 22, 2019

      In the course of reading Edward Snowden's autobiography Permanent Record, I came across a striking passage which I shared with a friend on WhatsApp. A few hours later when I visited YouTube, the first recommended video that popped up on my screen was

      2 min read

    • Article

      News Of The World: 10 Years Since Phone-hacking Scandal Brought Down Tabloid

      Jul 10, 2021

      Ten years ago this morning, newsagents took delivery of the final issue of the News of the World. But for the man who, through his investigations in the Guardian, set off the events that brought down the UK’s biggest-selling Sunday newspaper, it did

      4 min read

    • Article

      A Tale of Two Defectors

      Feb 21, 2019

      A Tale of Two Defectors
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Choice

      Dec 17, 2022

      The process of choosing the Person of the Year—who or what most influenced the events of the past 12 months, for good or for ill—can be agonizing. How could one person represent an entire year? Do we lean into the light, reach into the darkness, or l

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Choice

      Dec 16, 2022

      The process of choosing the Person of the Year—who or what most influenced the events of the past 12 months, for good or for ill—can be agonizing. How could one person represent an entire year? Do we lean into the light, reach into the darkness, or l

      3 min read

    • Article

      In Ukraine, Cool Calm May Prevent A Hot War

      Feb 17, 2022

      According to officials in Ukraine, a large-scale attack on their country has already begun – only it is not a land invasion by Russia. On Feb. 15, the country experienced a cyberoffensive on the military and two banks that was the largest denial-of-s

      2 min read

    Reviews for The Snowden Files

    4/5

    92 ratings11 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A dry subject was very well written as a chronological thriller. I particularly enjoyed this, especially the chapters on the negotiations between the US govt and the Guardian. The chapter on the UK govt's reaction made my blood boil more than a little. An excellent read.
    • 5/5
      Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the Guardian newspaper. Does an excellent job of explaining who Snowden is and what his "leaks" reveal.
    • 4/5
      An excellent, fast moving account of the Snowden affair, and why it matters. The sad thing of course, is that people have short memories, and although there was wide spread outrage a year ago, so many bad things have happened in the world since then, that its sort of been forgotten. At least, as far as I can see, very little change has happened. Harding tells a good story; sometimes its a little over blown - descriptions of Snowden, in Hong Kong, being in the "heart of Communist China" are a bit overdramatic. But mainly its well told. He misses one crucial point though. The reason for NSA and related agencies collecting all information, rather than targeting the information that they need, is that is simply easier and cheaper to collect all of it. Finding a needle in a haystack ( a metaphor thats used a lot in the book) depends on identifying the right haystack in the first place. Easier and cheaper to simply hoover up every haystack in sight. Collecting targeted data is hard - collecting all data is much easier. Harding makes the excellent point that how countries reacted depended a lot on how spies are perceived. In Britain spies are James Bond - basically good guys. There's nothing to worry about, you're in safe hands. In Germany, spies are the Stasi - there's a lot to worry about.But now we all know our data is being intercepted, it seems that most of us really don't care. Which proves that is not privacy that people care about, but simply about not being abused, ripped off or otherwise taken advantage of. The point being, though, how do you know? The Snowden affair raises a lot of important questions; sadly though, no one seems to want to debate them. And the bad guys already don't use electronic means for their communications
    • 4/5
      When the Patriot Act first passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, I was part of a group that organized panel discussions and protests against the act. The kind of wholesale surveillance revealed by Edward Snowden was exactly the kind of thing, we feared, for which the Patriot Act paved the way. And although the consensus (as far as there is one) seems to be that the post-9/11 surveillance techniques of the NSA over-reach even the provisions of the Patriot Act, the law allowed for just a little hop-skip to the place where we are today. So, while my inclination is to say, "I told you so," no one really cares what I thought when the act was first passed so why bother saying it?

      A commenter on the radio asserted that the U.S. is divided into two camps, those who think Edward Snowden is a hero and a patriot and those who think he's a traitor. I would argue there's a third camp of people who know his name but don't know anything else about him, but the division is the source of the point I'm trying to make. I've been inclined to think of Snowden as a hero from the beginning, and I'm even more inclined to think so after reading The Snowden Files. I'm also inclined to ask my many computer-savvy friends for advice on encryption software for my laptop. Not because I'm engaged in illegal activities, but that's the whole point: the NSA is hoovering up data from everyone, not just from suspected terrorists. If I pissed off someone in the government, I'm sure they could come up with enough evidence from my internet search history and my library records to cobble together a case against me, or against anyone.

      The thing I don't quite understand is why more people---myself included---aren't totally up-in-arms (figuratively speaking) about Snowden's revelations. Why are so many of us just going about business as usual? Is it because we assume we have nothing to hide, and so we're leaving things be and letting it up to the journalists to be targeted as terrorists for reporting government actions that flout our rights under the Constitution? Or is it because we already assumed we had no privacy and so this new information doesn't really bother us? As one friend puts it, "I assume they already have all of my information anyway."

      But about the book: I enjoyed this book. It was a pleasant (if disturbing) read. I admit, I skimmed the "Shoot the Messenger" chapter in which Harding goes into detail about the inner workings of British government. I'm still an American, after all, and hearing about what happens in other countries kind of makes me glaze over. I was astounded, however, at the grounding of the flight of the president of Bolivia when he was suspected of smuggling Snowden out of Russia (he didn't, btw). No wonder some other countries think of the U.S. as a big bully throwing its weight around.

      So, my next action is to procure Greenwald's book about the contents of the Snowden leaks, and to maybe buy myself a typewriter and start visiting people in person more often rather than calling or e-mailing.
    • 5/5
      It's clear that our governments, democratic or otherwise, still live in the Middle Ages. Perhaps the tools have changed but little else. We are still building walls around countries, if no longer cities, and sending out our spies and artillery salvos at enemies of our own constructing. Harding's book about the NSA whistleblower is all the evidence we need. He writes like the reporter that he is, which is a good thing. Half thriller, half commentary. Easy to read. Hard to forget. Which is also a good thing.
    • 5/5
      A great insight. Much more details than the movie. A recommended read.
    • 5/5
      This is a great book to learn about the events that surrounded the facts released by Snowden. A must read for any internet enthusiast.
    • 4/5
      Author appears to be tech illiterate. Otherwise good if extremely depressing book. Five years on and things actually got worse so this turned out to have had less of an effect than people (and probably Snowden himself) had hoped for.
    • 4/5
      If you really want to read about Snowden, go straight to the source instead of getting someone else's ideas of what happened. Read Permanent Record by Edward Snowden, excellent read!
    • 5/5
      This is an amazing account of whistle-blower Edward Snowden and his leak of intelligence documents to the press concerning the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance programs conducted against nearly all U.S. citizens, as well as those abroad, even including heads of state of allied countries. This release sparked debates worldwide about the needs for mass surveillance that infringe on our civil liberties and rights to privacy, as well as the need for a free press. Shockingly, the country even more zealous than ours in seeing this situation resolved in favor of its intelligence community was Britain, who citizens do not have a Bill of Rights with freedom of speech and the press to protect them from such invasive actions. The claims that all of this is necessary in the fight against terrorism lacks strength when no one can prove that even one terrorist attack has been thwarted due to these practices. As I write this I am in horror that because it is being posted on the Internet, I can be put on some government watch list simply because I commend Snowden for his actions in making us all aware of what our government has been doing to us. Making this worse is the fact that he was forced to seek asylum in Russia of all places because he is safer there! We have much to be ashamed of. I think of Snowden as being similar to Daniel Ellsberg and hope that our government does the responsible thing – enact meaningful curbs on such intelligence gathering with realistic oversight and brings Snowden home to the U.S.A. I can’t wait to see the movie.
    • 4/5
      Radio and TV coverage of the Snowden leaks were spotty. This book helped to fill in the details, background, and what happened since Snowden showed up in Moscow. Snowden himself, and his girlfriend Lindsay Mills, are fleshed out a little more, and I learned why an American would go to British journalists, the Guardian, with the information he had purloined. It turns out the British, specifically their top-secret telecommunications monitoring arm, GCHQ, collaborated with the NSA: “We have the brains: they have the money. It’s a collaboration that’s worked very well.” [Sir David Omand, Former GCHQ Director] No shortage of egoism and despotism to go around, then.

      Snowden was a right-wing libertarian in early writings on the web as a user he called ‘TheTrueHOOHA’. It was frankly unsettling for me to read/listen to his thinking as a teen, and see his progression to action. To use his words, he would like to be viewed as a patriot who believes in the right to privacy enshrined in the U.S. constitution. When I’d first learned of his leaks, I was startled. Listening to his first interview on TV, I was admiring. After reading this book, I am unsettled.

      Luke Harding, a Guardian reporter, outlines the Snowden action for us with a minimum of sensationalism but with some incredulity at the scope of the revelations. And the news is pretty sensational. Harding gives a little background into Snowden’s early development, and his foray into working as a U.S. government contractor specializing in the protection of U.S. government communications. Snowden’s amazed and amazing reach into the lives of others via their private data transfers must vindicate the paranoid. While I have my doubts that any world leader or business executive thought their telecommunications were truly secret, Snowden’s revelations are startling in the scope of the data collection and in the holes in the system, e.g., a relatively low-level contractor had access to the material.

      I should probably state from the get-go that I do not fear my government. I grew up in an age where inaction was much more to be expected than action; incompetence and bureaucratic bungling was much more common than overreach. I was not subject to the kind of totalitarian control experienced in Eastern Bloc countries, the Soviet Union, or China, but we have those examples to know it can happen. I believe the president and his minions who claim that the government is not listening to the communications of private citizens. They simply do not have the capacity, nor the interest, to do that. However, they now apparently have the means, and individuals within governments can have a deleterious effect upon the stated objectives of government. Snowden has shown us a place where an individual might have an outsized effect to his purported role.

      Knowing just what I know now, if I had to make a judgment on Snowden’s fate, I might say he should go to court congruently with the leadership of the NSA and the GCHQ. I don’t think it would have been possible for him to “go up the chain of command” to protest this data collection. It is ridiculous to contemplate that anyone would have listened to him, given the reaction from our fearless leaders upon learning of his revelations. But I wish things had gone differently…for him and for us.

      I listened to the Random House Audio version of this title, very ably read by Nicholas Guy Smith. I had a look at the paper copy as well, and found it concise enough that the momentum never lagged. Since Guardian reporters were the ones that initially broke this story, it is reasonable that they are the ones to write the details of what happened and the follow-up. I can’t imagine there is a person out there who wouldn’t be interested in this topic. Inform yourselves. This is going to be a political topic for some years to come.