A MACHINE SO ODIOUS
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 Snowden’s talk on “How your cell phone spies on you”. This little incident which is symptomatic of many of our technological experiences today would be ironical were it not so diabolical. Freespeech activist Mario Savio had presciently described institutional power as an odious machine that one couldn’t participate in and would require people putting their bodies upon the gears and wheels to make it stop. Snowden’s Permanent Record and Mindf*ck: Cambridge Analytica and the Plot to Break America by Christopher Wylie are the memoirs of two individuals who put their bodies upon the gears of the odious machine of our time.
Both have become household names as whistleblowers who exposed the mass surveillance of ordinary citizens by the CIA, and the misuse of Facebook data of 87 million people by a company to subvert the electoral process. The audacity and the villainy of the system, the cost that they paid and the impact of their revelations are largely a matter of public record. What then does one anticipate going into the memoirs of a whistleblower? If memoirs are traditionally tell-it-all confessions, what narrative expectations may we have of people who have already told-it-all?
While both books overlap in their concern for the annihilation of privacy, Snowden’s gentle, self-reflexive voice seems to almost belie the expectations we have of a heroic whistleblower. It is not till one-third into the book that you even encounter the CIA, the deep state and the conspiratorial power associated with Snowden. It is, instead, a moving account of a shy geek coming of age in the early world of the Internet. His first experience with hacking involved him turning back the clocks at home by an hour to buy himself a little more awake time. With Snowden, you get a description of a form of life in which curiosity, trust and openness were traits that one learnt from the internet even as they were values that one expected from the world of technology. Far from being a young radical, he admits that his naïve belief in the post-9/11 narrative of good and evil and acceptance of the moral blackmail of patriotism went against the grain of an instinctive hacker ethos. From being a hacker to working as one for the CIA, Snowden gradually realises that the seemingly minor technological compromises (a little privacy here, a little bypassing of procedure there) were underwritten by a sinister undermining of public and private values resulting, finally, in the ultimate act of hacking: the hacking of the Constitution and the political system.
Wylie tells a similar story but his vantage point is very different. If Snowden is the insider coding the shadow state into existence, Wylie’s beast takes the form of a company willing to mimic the deep state for the sake of profit. Wylie’s book takes us into a sordid world in which all information is potentially weaponised. Working with the premise that people exposed only to false truths will both act on, as well as further propagate, those beliefs, Cambridge Analytica went on to engineer election results, whip up racist frenzy and create communities of hatred around the world.
While Wylie emerges as someone too desperate to be a hero, Snowden, in all his loneliness, is a more reluctant one. Snowden comes from a coast guard family, which enables him to spot the nautical undercurrents in the political language of informational treason (leaks being the primary example). He reminds us that the term “whistle blower” originally comes from maritime history where whistles were blown to signal emergencies. One should read both books as urgent warnings for our times, but if you must choose, then Permanent Record serves as a better guide for living an examined life within the confines of the odious machine. ■
Lawrence Liang teaches at the SLGC, Ambedkar University, Delhi
Both books are an urgent warning for our times, but Snowden’s book is a better guide for living an examined life
Actor Vivek Oberoi flopped as PM Narendra Modi when the film released this May. But the PM biopic industry soldiers on. Yet another Modi film, Mann Bairagi, is out next month. Haryana youth Abhay Verma will play Modi in the Sanjay Leela Bhansalidirected sequel to Chalo Jeete Hain, which traced Modi’s childhood. Mann... will trace his journey to the Himalayas and back. It won’t be the last of Modi on screen: expect a film a year on the political journey of the country’s prime minister.