Rajiv Ashrafi

“The reason you're reading this book is that I did a dangerous thing for a man in my position: I decided to tell the truth.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“The government should be afraid of the people, the people shouldn't be afraid of the government.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“Ours was now a country in which the cost of replacing a broken machine with a newer model was typically lower than the cost of having it fixed by an expert, which itself was typically lower than the cost of sourcing the parts and figuring out how to fix it yourself. This fact alone virtually guaranteed technological tyranny, which was perpetuated not by the technology itself but by the ignorance of everyone who used it daily and yet failed to understand it. To refuse to inform yourself about the basic operation and maintenance of the equipment you depended on was to passively accept that tyranny and agree to its terms: when your equipment works, you’ll work, but when your equipment breaks down you’ll break down, too. Your possessions would possess you.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“You could find beauty nearly anywhere if you stopped to look for it, but the battle to get through the days made it easy to forget that this totally cost-free luxury existed.”
― Robert Galbraith, Career of Evil