The book
“Snowden” by Ted Rall (Seven Stories Press, 224 pages, $16.95)
How to go
What: A book-signing with Ted Rall for the release of “Snowden”
Where: Books & Co., at The Greene, 4453 Walnut St., Beavercreek
When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 9
More info: 937-429-2169 or www.booksandco.com
In June, 2013 Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee, leaked thousands of classified documents that he obtained while working as a contractor for the United States National Security Agency. Snowden’s actions were praised by some and condemned by others. The U.S. Justice Department accused Snowden of stealing government property and of violating the Espionage Act.
Ted Rall traces how this once unknown government computer expert ultimately became an international fugitive in his biography “Snowden.”
Rall is a cartoonist, journalist and a former Daytonian. As his fans would expect, Rall has chosen to depict Snowden’s life story in graphic novel form. The cartoonist will be in our area for a book-signing on Wednesday.
Snowden’s father was a career Coast Guard officer and his mother was a clerk at the district court. Snowden’s friends recalled that “he liked fantasy games” and “video games.” The family moved to Crofton in suburban Maryland just outside of Washington, D.C. Many of the residents of Crofton were employed by the NSA.
Rall writes that “throughout the tumult of Snowden’s teen years and early adulthood, however, there was one constant: his interest in technology, gaming, social media, chatting online. The Internet, he posted to a discussion forum, was “the most important invention in all human history.”
Following our 2003 invasion of Iraq Snowden attempted to join our “elite special forces,” but he “washed out of training at Fort Benning, Georgia during summer 2004.” The following year Snowden was hired by the NSA.
He rose quickly. Rall recounts that “in 2007, when Snowden was 24, the CIA transferred him overseas under state department cover. As a ‘telecommunications systems officer,’ he ran cybersecurity for U.S. diplomats stationed at the U.S. permanent mission in Geneva.”
The author asserts that Snowden’s world view was altered during his time in Switzerland. In 2009 he quit the CIA and went back to the NSA: “the new job came with more responsibilities and a higher security clearance. The things he saw increased his disillusionment.”
Rall’s depiction of the NSA’s spying capability is frightening. He claims that “whenever government spooks want a picture of you the NSA activates your laptop camera. Program name: GUMFISH.” If you have read “1984” by George Orwell, then some of this will sound eerily familiar: “there’s no end to the NSA’s ingenuity. Smart TVs, the new generation of televisions wired to the Internet to allow streaming and web surfing, have cameras that the NSA can use to turn them into a telescreen as well, watching and recording your every move.”
Between 2009 and 2012 he was posted in Japan. This was when Snowden chose to become a whistleblower. Rall states that “he decided to gather top-secret NSA files about the agency’s illegal surveillance of the American people, then leak them to a reputable independent journalist brave enough to present the facts to the public.”
The rest is history. Snowden fled the country, leaked the files and has been on the run ever since. In “Snowden” we learn the where, what, how and why of this fearless, and some might say foolhardy, act.
About the Author