Permanent Record

by Edward Snowden

Yes, man really did land on the moon. Climate change is real. Chemtrails are not a thing.

Had constitutional oversight mechanisms been functioning properly, this extremist interpretation of the Fourth Amendment—effectively holding that the very act of using modern technologies is tantamount to a surrender of your privacy rights—would have been rejected by Congress and the courts.

Ultimately, every language, including English, demonstrates its culture’s relationship to power by how it chooses to define the act of disclosure.

We can’t permit our data to be used to sell us the very things that must not be sold, such as journalism. If we do, the journalism we get will be merely the journalism we want, or the journalism that the powerful want us to have, not the honest collective conversation that’s necessary.