How a chance encounter with a smart fridge helped convince Edward Snowden to leak the documents revealing the NSA spying operation
- Edward Snowden's 2019 autobiography, Permanent Record, is an explanation of who Snowden is, and why he decided to leak documents about the NSA's spying operations.
- Snowden moved back to the US from Japan in 2011 after accidentally coming across documentation that revealed the extent of NSA spying.
- When he moved home, an introduction to an early smart fridge and the surveillance possibilities of the internet of things was one of many factors that contributed to his decision to leak in 2013.
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Edward Snowden, the soon-to-be National Security Agency whistleblower, saw a smart fridge for the first time in 2011 at a Best Buy in the Columbia Mall in Maryland.
He had just moved back to the United States from Japan, where he had finally seen a draft copy of a classified document that detailed the NSA's spying capabilities.
Wracked with guilt after confirming his suspicions, Snowden moved home, hoping to find some domestic normalcy to help him forget what he had learned.
"I'd decided it was best to live in denial and just make some money, make life better for the people I loved - after all, wasn't that what everybody else did?" Snowden wrote in his 2019 autobiography, Permanent Record.
Snowden's book details how a dedicated intelligence agent and son of a military family become the most-notorious leaker of the century.
The smart fridge was an early form of consumer internet of things. The technology is becoming more commonly used by both consumers and the owners and operators of real estate, and venture funding has been streaming into IoT startups. Things like smart light bulbs or appliances are touted as a way to be more eco-friendly, but their connected nature is exactly what raised concerns with Snowden.
Snowden had just moved into an empty home with his girlfriend (now wife), Lindsay Mills. On a trip to purchase some appliances for the home, Mills looked at blenders while Snowden wandered aimlessly, until the WiFi-enabled smart fridge stopped him in his tracks.
"This, plain and simple, blew my mind," Snowden wrote.
Snowden, incredulous, stood there as a salesperson listed the fridge's features: it could browse the internet, send messages and phone calls, play YouTube, monitor the freshness of food, and suggest recipes based on what is in the fridge.
On the drive home, Snowden couldn't stop thinking about how manufacturers only connected the fridge to sell the data it collects about the household. It led him into a dark place, realizing that people were paying to be surveilled.
The smart fridge was an early consumer manifestation of the internet-of-things, now most popularly represented by the Amazon Echo and Google Home, some of this holiday season's top gifts.
Snowden also was concerned about the ability of the state to gather information held by private companies, whether through direct cooperation or through technological backdoors.
CNET in June reported that Amazon has partnered with local police officers to offer free or discounted smart doorbell products, with some police departments in turn asking recipients to turn over footage at the police's request.
Snowden couldn't stop imagining the future world that the smart fridge seemed to indicate.
Eventually, the stress of knowing what he wasn't supposed to know was too much. Snowden had his first flare-up of epilepsy, and was bedridden for months.
When he returned to work, after the death of Osama Bin Laden didn't stop the surveillance state and the tech-enabled revolutions of the Arab Spring showed how technology could be used by the people, instead of a surveillance state, he was ready to do something about it.
In the book, Snowden says he is unclear of exactly when he decided to illegally gather and disseminate proof of NSA spying.
Instead, he said that the decision, like any important decision was "made subconsciously" and only became apparent "once fully formed - once you're finally strong enough to admit to yourself that is what your conscience has already chosen for you."
The smart fridge, and the possibilities it suggested about the future state of surveillance, weren't the deciding factors, but they were some of the first stirrings of what would become a world-changing revelation.
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