In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Now, Snowden reveals for the first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it.Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online - a man who became a spy, a whistleblower and, in exile, the Internet's conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion and an unflinching candour, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.'Fascinating' Observer'Riveting' Financial Times'Gripping' Washington Post'Reads like a literary thriller' New York Times