// Comparison
Anonymat sur Internet vs Permanent Record: Which Should You Read?
Two cybersecurity books on Privacy, compared honestly: who each is for, what each does best, and which to read first.
A practical French guide to online anonymity and privacy — proxies, VPNs, Tor, secure messaging and mobile — by a Le Monde cybersecurity journalist (later one of the Pegasus reporters).
Edward Snowden's first-person memoir: the technical work that led him into the NSA's mass-surveillance programs, his reasoning for disclosure, and the Hong Kong handoff to the journalists who broke the story.
Read this if
Skip this if
Key takeaways
- A clear, practical French primer on online anonymity for ordinary users.
- Written by Untersinger (Le Monde), later a Pegasus revelations reporter — credible and grounded.
- From 2014: the principles hold (Tor, VPNs, messaging), but verify specific tools against current advice.
- The technical case for the disclosures is sharper than the political coverage ever made it: Snowden walks through the specific architectures and capabilities that violated his oath.
- The personal-cost chapters are the underrated half of the book; whistleblowing is structurally discouraged because the pipeline is set up to make life miserable for the person who goes through it.
- Operational privacy is illustrated, not preached — the book is itself an artifact of careful OPSEC, and that lesson is worth more than any single chapter.
How they compare
We rate Permanent Record higher (4/5 against 3/5 for Anonymat sur Internet). For most readers, that means Permanent Record is the primary pick and Anonymat sur Internet is a useful follow-up.
Both books target beginner-level readers, so the choice is about topic, not difficulty.
Anonymat sur Internet and Permanent Record both cover Privacy, so reading them in sequence reinforces the same material from different angles.