The God's Eye View

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I couldn’t have written this book without the benefit of what the public has learned from whistleblower Edward Snowden. Though if I had written it before Snowden’s revelations, I’m confident substantial portions would have sounded like tinfoil-hatted crazy talk.

What we know instead is that most of what I’ve described in these pages is real. And while God’s Eye itself is speculative, anyone familiar with the record of J. Edgar Hoover, the history of COINTELPRO, the allegations of NSA analyst Russell Tice, or the workings of human nature generally will know that even God’s Eye is unlikely to be entirely imaginary.

That said, I know here and there I’ve taken some minor institutional and technical liberties, mostly in the service of moving the plot along more crisply. Apologies for this to the experts (thanked below) who were kind enough to read and correct the manuscript before publication. As for the unintentional errors I’m sure I’ve made despite a fair amount of research and fact-checking, I’ll look forward to hearing from readers, and to posting corrections on my website at http://www.barryeisler.com/mistakes.php.

For more on the facts behind my fiction, I recommend the following:

Timeline of NSA revelations

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/multimedia/timeline-edward-snowden-revelations.html

“13 Ways the NSA Has Spied on Us”

http://www.vox.com/2014/7/9/5880403/13-ways-the-nsa-spies-on-us

One of the NSA’s least known and most potent surveillance tools: EO 12333

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/meet-executive-order-12333-the-reagan-rule-that-lets-the-nsa-spy-on-americans/2014/07/18/93d2ac22-0b93-11e4-b8e5-d0de80767fc2_story.html

The false and propagandistic notion of an American “oath” of secrecy

http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2013/06/memo-to-authoritarians-oath-is-to.html

Not so many burning Humvees in Desert Storm, true, but see Day 15 and Day 41

http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2013/02/operation-desert-storm/

How an undersea oil eruption became a “leak”

http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2010/07/its-just-leak.html

“Enhanced Interrogation” sounds better in the original German

http://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2007/05/-versch-auml-rfte-vernehmung/228158/

It’s almost as though all these “narcissist” hacks were working off the same set of talking points

https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=snowden+a+narcissist&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Speaking of the “narcissism” talking points/projection, don’t miss Jay Rosen on the “Toobin Principle”

http://pressthink.org/2013/08/the-toobin-principle/

“They are using the exact same deny, degrade, distract, disrupt, destroy playbook against [Snowden] that his own revelations show are being used against every other activist.”

https://occupysavvy.wordpress.com/2015/07/07/occupy-independence-forever/

Our august lawmakers solicit the Defense Intelligence Agency for dirt they can use to undermine Snowden’s credibility

https://news.vice.com/article/exclusive-inside-washingtons-quest-to-bring-down-edward-snowden

1.2 million people on US government watch list

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2014/oct/11/second-leaker-in-us-intelligence-says-glenn-greenwald

US/Turkish intelligence cooperation

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/31/nsaturkeyspiegel/

More on NSA Special Liaison Advisors

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/document/2014/08/31/foreign-relations-mission-titles/

Webcam hacking

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/webcam-spying-goes-mainstream-as-miss-teen-usa-describes-hack/

Mesh network CCTV surveillance systems are trivial to hack

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/08/11/surveillance-cameras-for-all/

Harvard secretly installs cameras in its classrooms

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/07/us/secret-cameras-rekindle-privacy-debate-at-harvard.html

Gunshot-detecting microphones

http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21617018-how-gunshot-detecting-microphones-help-police-curb-crime-calling-shots?fsrc=scn/tw/te/pe/callingtheshots

Identifying people via biometric data like height, stride length, and walking speed

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/12/4-seconds-of-body-cam-video-can-reveal-a-biometric-fingerprint-study-says/

“New Surveillance Technology Can Track Everyone in an Area for Several Hours at a Time”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/new-surveillance-technology-can-track-everyone-in-an-area-for-several-hours-at-a-time/2014/02/05/82f1556e-876f-11e3-a5bd-844629433ba3_story.html

Facial recognition technology is everywhere, even in churches

http://fusion.net/story/154199/facial-recognition-no-rules/

Who is this Marcy Wheeler?!

https://www.emptywheel.net

Intelligence agencies achieve greater openness by prohibiting officials from talking to media

http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304049904579516103606857772

Those damn subversives the director is so upset about

Barrett Brown — http://frontburner.dmagazine.com/author/barrettbrown/

Sarah Harrison — https://wikileaks.org/Profile-Sarah-Harrison.html

Murtaza Hussain — https://firstlook.org/theintercept/staff/murtaza-hussain/

Angela Keaton — https://twitter.com/antiwar2

Jason Leopold — https://news.vice.com/contributor/jason-leopold

Janet Reitman — http://www.rollingstone.com/contributor/janet-reitman

Trevor Timm — https://freedom.press/about/board-staff/trevor-timm

Marcy Wheeler — https://www.emptywheel.net

How the NSA tracks cell phone locations

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/nsa-tracked-americans-cell-locations-two-years-senator-hints-theres-more

A lost dog identified three thousand miles from home via a microchip implant. Coming soon to babies everywhere, no doubt

http://www.aol.com/article/2014/09/18/lost-dog-found-3-000-miles-away/20964319/

Amazingly, about a day after I wrote the scene where the director ruminates about using a kidnapping to persuade Americans to have microchips implanted in their children, this was published (and quickly debunked)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/09/23/i-helped-save-a-kidnapped-man-from-murder-with-apples-new-encryption-rules-we-never-wouldve-found-him/

Another place the government used the all-seeing eye of providence was as part of the design for the Total Information Awareness program. The Latin means “knowledge is power”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientia_potentia_est#/media/File: IAO-logo.png

The brilliant cartoonist Tom Tomorrow summed up Total Information Awareness perfectly… all the way back in 2002

https://twitter.com/tomtomorrow/status/613187965737660416/photo/1

Inventing ever scarier-sounding terrorist groups to justify more bombings. Heard of the Khorasan group lately?

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/09/28/u-s-officials-invented-terror-group-justify-bombing-syria/

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/called-khorasan-group-doesnt-exist/

United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture finds Chelsea Manning’s treatment cruel and inhuman

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/mar/12/bradley-manning-cruel-inhuman-treatment-un

Yemenis seek justice in wedding drone strike

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2014/01/yemenis-seek-justice-wedding-drone-strike-201418135352298935.html

The best coverage of America’s drone wars ever is courtesy of comedian John Oliver

http://www.motherjones.com/mixed-media/2014/09/john-oliver-drones-obama-harvey-keitel

Detaining someone assisting in journalism under the pretext of antiterrorism

http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2013/08/david-miranda-and-preclusion-of-privacy.html

Hacking a car and turning it into a drone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D6jxBDy8k8&feature=youtu.be

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/business/10hack.html?_r=1&

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/michael-hastings-car-hacked_n_3492339.html

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/07/24/hackers-reveal-nasty-new-car-attacks-with-me-behind-the-wheel-video/

http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21654954-computer-networks-cars-are-now-targets-hackers-deus-ex-vehiculum

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150721/08391831712/newsflash-car-network-security-is-still-horrible-very-dangerous-joke.shtml

Airplanes are vulnerable to cyberhacking, too

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/04/17/security-expert-pulled-off-flight-by-fbi-after-exposing-airline-tech/

Everything in a high-end car is microprocessor-controlled — even the steering

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/car-driving-safety/safety-regulatory-devices/self-parking-car1.htm

Hertz puts cameras inside some of its rental cars

http://arstechnica.com/cars/2015/03/hertz-puts-cameras-in-some-of-its-rental-cars-but-it-never-meant-to-be-creepy/

It’s possible Manus has seen this video on concealing a handgun inside a vehicle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odT-CfS7lQs

How Western media is manipulated by ISIS into spreading jihadist propaganda

http://www.juancole.com/2014/09/media-politicians-should-stop-letting-isil-manipulated-them.html

The real starship Enterprise-like “Information Dominance Center,” used by former NSA chief Keith Alexander, is at Fort Belvoir, not Fort Meade. But I couldn’t resist moving it

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek

See how excited Brian Williams gets when the government permits him a peek inside the (gasp) Situation Room!

http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/04/11539949-inside-the-situation-room-a-guided-tour

If you think Brian’s interview of the director was deferential to the point of parody, you probably haven’t seen Wolf Blitzer’s version, with FBI director James Comey

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/624612963064807428/photo/1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=204&v=7RyVXLKO0DM

Pakistani government forces cell phone users to turn over fingerprints or lose their service

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pakistanis-face-a-deadline-surrender-fingerprints-or-give-up-cellphone/2015/02/23/de995a88-b932-11e4-bc30-a4e75503948a_story.html

ACLU rendition of just how powerful a tool location data can be

https://www.aclu.org/meet-jack-or-what-government-could-do-all-location-data

Leaving your cell phone at home when you go out? Using encryption? The NSA might think you’re a terrorist

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/09/berlins-digital-exiles-tech-activists-escape-nsa

NSA spied on US senators

http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/09/25/secret-cold-war-documents-reveal-nsa-spied-on-senators/

“We Kill People Based on Metadata”

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2014/may/10/we-kill-people-based-metadata/

ISIS waterboarded journalist James Foley

http://www.ibtimes.com/james-foley-waterboarding-us-journalist-was-tortured-isis-using-same-techniques-cia-used-1673268

Obama prosecutes whistleblowers under the 1917 Espionage Act more than twice as many times as all administrations in history combined

http://theweek.com/article/index/246029/is-obama-abusing-the-espionage-act

Here’s what the Constitutional law professor and Nobel Peace laureate did to whistleblower Jeffrey Sterling

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/27/torture-must-circumstances-call-new-york-times/

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/06/18/jeffrey-sterling-took-on-the-cia-and-lost-everything/

Secret FISA “court” is nothing but an administrative rubber stamp

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/24/the-secret-fisa-court-must-go.html

FISA “court” approves 99.97 percent of government surveillance requests

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/06/fisa-court-nsa-spying-opinion-reject-request

Journalists relying on face-to-face meetings and human couriers

http://barryeisler.blogspot.com/2013/08/david-miranda-and-preclusion-of-privacy.html

NSA spends billions to weaken international standards, install backdoors, and otherwise subvert encryption

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/07/us/politics/legislation-seeks-to-bar-nsa-tactic-in-encryption.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

NSA intercepts shipments of Internet-ordered computers; infects them with malware

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-nsa-uses-powerful-toolbox-in-effort-to-spy-on-global-networks-a-940969.html

“Secret Documents Reveal NSA Campaign Against Encryption”

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/09/05/us/documents-reveal-nsa-campaign-against-encryption.html?_r=0

“A Few Thoughts on Cryptographic Engineering”

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/09/on-nsa.html

The menace of “insider threats”

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/20/194513/obamas-crackdown-views-leaks-as.html

Over 700,000,000 people changing their online behavior to evade NSA surveillance

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2014/12/over_700_millio.html

US Postal Service logs all mail for law enforcement

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?_r=0

Over 1.5 million people with top-secret clearances (more than the population of Norway)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/24/5-1-million-americans-have-security-clearances-thats-more-than-the-entire-population-of-norway/

“New Hi-Tech Police Surveillance: The ‘StingRay’ Cell Phone Spying Device”

http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-hi-tech-police-surveillance-the-stingray-cell-phone-spying-device/5331165

In case you’re wondering how the director can come up with spare grenade launchers to trade like playing cards

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/pentagon-loses-sight-of-500-million-in-counterterrorism-aid-given-to-yemen/2015/03/17/f4ca25ce-cbf9-11e4-8a46-b1dc9be5a8ff_story.html

NSA’s AURORAGOLD cell phone eavesdropping and encryption subversion program

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/04/nsa-auroragold-hack-cellphones/

NASA’s SHARAD technology

http://mars.nasa.gov/mer/technology/si_remote_instrumentation.html

And other existing and coming means of peering through brick and concrete

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1505138-00-wallsensorreport-508.html#document/p20/a198024

Mobile IMSI-catcher cell phone trackers

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/09/meet-the-machines-that-steal-your-phones-data/

Pakistani government forces cell phone users to turn over fingerprints or lose their service

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/pakistanis-face-a-deadline-surrender-fingerprints-or-give-up-cellphone/2015/02/23/de995a88-b932-11e4-bc30-a4e75503948a_story.html

“We don’t know if it was terrorism” means “We don’t know if it was Muslims,” and other aspects of the “terrorism expert” industry

http://www.democracynow.org/2015/1/13/glenn_greenwald_on_how_to_be

If you think Barbara Stirr’s exchange with the director was deferential to the point of parody, you probably haven’t seen Wolf Blitzer’s version, with FBI director James Comey

https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/624612963064807428/photo/1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=204&v=7RyVXLKO0DM

No one uses words like “homeland” accidentally

http://intercepts.defensenews.com/2013/08/auvsi-dont-say-drone-no-really-dont-say-drone/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/barry-eisler/its-just-a-leak_b_635570.html

“US Military Drone Network in the Middle East and Africa”

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/us-military-drone-network-in-the-middle-east-and-africa/325/

US automatically counts all military-age males killed as terrorists

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/29/world/obamas-leadership-in-war-on-al-qaeda.html?_r=0

ISIS claims US hostage killed in coalition air strike in Syria

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/06/us-hostage-isis-coalition-air-strike-killed-syria

On the CIA choosing its own pet reporters, by two great journalists for whom I’ve named characters in other books — Dan Froomkin and Scott Horton

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/09/democracy-people-dont-know-government/

Wolf Blitzer is a particularly compliant tool

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/23/nbc-news-releases-long-awaited-trailer-summer-horror-film-isis/

The New York Times helpfully publishes the government’s side of the story: Sure, American hostages were killed, but counterterrorism officials and analysts say the drone program overall is effective…

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/world/asia/cia-qaeda-drone-strikes-warren-weinstein-giovanni-lo-porto-deaths.html

Establishment “journalists” detest whistleblowers

http://antiwar.com/blog/2015/03/24/whistleblowers-and-the-press-heavyweights/

The surveillance state never stops looking for excuses to increase its powers

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/world/europe/britains-domestic-intelligence-chief-calls-for-greater-authority-for-spies.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

“Former FBI Assistant Director: To Keep Budgets High, We Must ‘Keep Fear Alive’”

https://www.privacysos.org/node/1660

The FBI’s tendency to create, then take credit for dismantling, terror plots that could never have existed without the FBI’s assistance

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/16/latest-fbi-boast-disrupting-terror-u-s-plot-deserves-scrutiny-skepticism/

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/29/feds_make_fed_up_friends_how_the_fbi_encourages_people_to_act_their_worst/

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/02/26/fbi-manufacture-plots-terrorism-isis-grave-threats/

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrorist/

TED talk by Trevor Aaronson on how the FBI’s tactics create domestic terrorists

http://www.ted.com/talks/trevor_aaronson_how_this_fbi_strategy_is_actually_creating_us_based_terrorists

To get what you want it’s good to “scare hell” out of the American people

http://www.whale.to/b/mullins6.html

New eavesdropping equipment sucks all the data off your cell phone

http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/04/your-phone-just-got-sucked-255790.html

“A Decade After 9/11, Police Departments Are Increasingly Militarized”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/12/police-militarization-9-11-september-11_n_955508.html

Domestic drones

https://www.aclu.org/blog/tag/domestic-drones

FBI behind mysterious surveillance aircraft over US cities

http://bigstory.ap.org/urn: publicid: ap.org:4b3f220e33b64123a3909c60845da045

More on domestic surveillance aircraft

https://medium.com/@MinneapoliSam/fleet-of-government-aircraft-flying-secret-missions-over-u-s-cities-84cbdf57dfbb

This ACLU domestic drone “nightmare scenario” from 2012 doesn’t sound so far-fetched now, does it?

https://www.aclu.org/blog/drones-nightmare-scenario?redirect=blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/drones-nightmare-scenario

Spy organizations routinely monitor email accounts of journalists, assessing investigative journalists as a threat comparable to terrorists and hackers

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/19/gchq-intercepted-emails-journalists-ny-times-bbc-guardian-le-monde-reuters-nbc-washington-post

More on the NSA spying on journalists

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-nsa-and-american-spies-targeted-spiegel-a-1042023.html

FBI’s instructions to police: “Do not advise this individual that they [sic] may be on a terrorist watchlist”

http://www.dailydot.com/politics/jeremy-hammond-terrorist-watchlist-fbi/

White House: “It is with tremendous sorrow that we recently concluded that a US Government counterterrorism operation in January killed two innocent hostages held by al-Qaeda”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/04/23/statement-press-secretary

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/world/asia/2-qaeda-hostages-were-accidentally-killed-in-us-raid-white-house-says.html?smid=tw-share&_r=0

One day after the news that US drones killed American hostages, the PR counteroffensive kicks into gear: “Counterterrorism officials and analysts say…”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/world/asia/cia-qaeda-drone-strikes-warren-weinstein-giovanni-lo-porto-deaths.html

“5 NSA Whistleblowers Who Came Before Snowden”

http://capitalismisfreedom.com/top-nsa-whistleblowers-came-snowden/

More on what happened to every NSA whistleblower who tried to work through the system can be found in chapter 9 of James Risen’s excellent book, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2014)

http://www.amazon.com/Pay-Any-Price-Greed-Endless-ebook/dp/B00J76JPYK/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1427299672&sr=8–1&keywords=james+risen

More on Jesselyn Radack, whistleblower and lawyer to whistleblowers

http://www.theverge.com/2014/6/24/5818594/edward-snowdens-lawyer-jesselyn-radack-will-keep-your-secrets

And Diane Roark and Thomas Tamm, who also tried to go through the system

http://cryptome.org/2014/10/roark-risen.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-diane-roark/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/government-elections-politics/united-states-of-secrets/the-frontline-interview-thomas-tamm/

Peyton Quinn’s Five Rules for Managing Impending Violence

http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/get_attacked.htm

HUMINT, SIGINT… and now, LOVEINT

http://crookedtimber.org/2013/08/24/loveint/

The National License Plate Reader (LPR) Initiative — the DEA’s massive license plate tracking system, open to other federal agencies

http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2015/01/27/deas-massive-license-plate-tracking-program-spies-on-millions-of-americans-helps-agents-seize-property

Using license plate trackers to monitor gun shows… and what else?

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/29/us-plan-track-car-drivers-documents

License plate readers are being paired with facial recognition technology, just like Evie’s camera network

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/05/aclu-dea-documents-spy-program-millions-drivers-passengers

The NSA targets the privacy-conscious

http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html

XKeyscore: NSA’s Google for the World’s Private Communications

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/01/nsas-google-worlds-private-communications/

How XKeyscore works

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/02/look-under-hood-xkeyscore/

How the FBI caught Petraeus: cross-referencing metadata, all without a warrant

http://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty-national-security/surveillance-and-security-lessons-petraeus-scandal

MIT researchers report they don’t need an individual’s name, address, or credit card number to identify people

http://www.zdnet.com/article/credit-card-metadata-study-easily-identifies-individuals/

Don’t worry; it’s just metadata!

http://www.wired.com/2013/06/phew-it-was-just-metadata-not-think-again/

The CIA intercepts whistleblower communications

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/07/25/234484/after-cia-gets-secret-whistleblower.html

How a surveillance system ostensibly targeted at terrorists in fact sucks in massive amounts of unrelated people and data: Canada’s download dragnet

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/28/canada-cse-levitation-mass-surveillance/

How to leak securely using SecureDrop

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/28/how-to-leak-to-the-intercept/

CIA director’s attempt to conceal emails by saving them as drafts, not sending

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/12/heres-the-e-mail-trick-petraeus-and-broadwell-used-to-communicate/

If you’re using encryption, the NSA is watching extra closely

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130620/15390323549/nsa-has-convinced-fisa-court-that-if-your-data-is-encrypted-you-might-be-terrorist-so-itll-hang-onto-your-data.shtml

Lawyer-client privileged communications are of particular interest

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/feb/18/uk-admits-unlawfully-monitoring-legally-privileged-communications

Governments monitor WikiLeaks website, collect IP addresses of visitors

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/18/snowden-docs-reveal-covert-surveillance-and-pressure-tactics-aimed-at-wikileaks-and-its-supporters/

Thinking about searching for privacy-enhancing tools? The NSA is watching for that

http://daserste.ndr.de/panorama/aktuell/nsa230_page-1.html

UK Parliamentary Committee: “GCHQ’s bulk interception capability is used primarily to find patterns in, or characteristics of, online communications which indicate involvement in threats to national security”—aka God’s Eye

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/12/uk-parliament-finally-offers-evidence-mass-surveillance-stops-terror-attacks/

NSA spies on journalists

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-nsa-and-american-spies-targeted-spiegel-a-1042023.html

“Surveillance Forces Journalists to Think and Act Like Spies”

https://cpj.org/2015/04/attacks-on-the-press-surveillance-forces-journalists-to-think-act-like-spies.php

This is by design: “When journalists must compete with spies and surveillance, even if they win, society loses.”

http://inthesetimes.com/article/18035/a-spys-guide-to-protecting-whistleblowers

Another example of God’s Eye-type pattern recognition: the NSA’s SKYNET program

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/08/u-s-government-designated-prominent-al-jazeera-journalist-al-qaeda-member-put-watch-list/

Israel’s Unit 8200 uses compromising information gathered from captured emails to coerce key Palestinians. Unthinkable NSA does anything similar?

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2015/05/11/if-youre-not-outraged-about-the-nsa-surveillance-heres-why-you-should-be/

Turning a phone into a listening device via WARRIOR PRIDE and NOSEY SMURF (yes, they really have names like that — your tax dollars at work)

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/03/10/ispy-cia-campaign-steal-apples-secrets/

New exploit turns Samsung Galaxy phones into remote bugging devices

https://twitter.com/rj_gallagher/status/618543070884315136/photo/1

Using a cell phone’s gyroscopes like a microphone

http://www.wired.com/2014/08/gyroscope-listening-hack/

The $2.8 billion JLENS blimps floating over Maryland

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/12/17/billion-dollar-surveillance-blimp-launch-maryland/

The CIA/US Marshals joint cell phone tracking initiative

http://www.wsj.com/articles/cia-gave-justice-department-secret-phone-scanning-technology-1426009924

Accessing baby monitors and other listening devices

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/09/04/shodan-terrifying-search-engine/

Entertainment systems listening in on your living room conversations

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-31296188

The NSA converts spoken words into searchable text so surveillance of conversations can be conducted at huge scale

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/05/nsa-speech-recognition-snowden-searchable-text/

I wish I were inventing the phrase “civil liberties extremist,” as clear a sign of our authoritarian times as any. Alas, I’m not. Pity Barry Goldwater

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2015/may/18/obama-clinton-christie-politics-live

Uber tracks user movements with a program called God View (aka Creepy Stalker View)

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/10/03/god-view-uber-allegedly-stalked-users-for-party-goers-viewing-pleasure/

http://www.engadget.com/2014/11/19/uber-godview-tracking/

“When you collect it all, when you monitor everyone, you understand nothing.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/22/edward-snowden-nsa-reform

“We are drowning in information. And yet we know nothing.”

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/28/nsa-officials-privately-criticize-collect-it-all-surveillance/

Former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden’s “off-the-record” interview gets live-tweeted

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/24/former-spy-chief-overheard-acela-twitter

Former NSA director Keith Alexander doesn’t cover his laptop webcam

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/03/do-webcams-watch-the-watchmen-ex-nsa-head-no-sticker

Not quite the “privacy advocate” position imagined in the book, but close enough: the president’s blue ribbon intelligence reform panel recommends “public interest advocate”

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/civil-libertarians-need-to-infiltrate-the-nsa/383932/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jan/08/must-counterterrorism-cancel-democracy/

Names change; programs continue

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office#Components_of_TIA_projects_that_continue_to_be_developed

For more on the real-world events depicted in the prologue and in the novel generally, I recommend Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2014)

http://www.amazon.com/No-Place-Hide-Snowden-Surveillance-ebook/dp/B00E0CZX0G/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=

And Laura Poitras’s Oscar- and other award-winning documentary, Citizenfour

https://citizenfourfilm.com

A brief history of the US surveillance state

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175724

Julian Assange’s When Google Met WikiLeaks (New York: OR Books, 2014)

http://www.amazon.com/When-Google-WikiLeaks-Julian-Assange-ebook/dp/B00PYZONM2/ref=sr_1_2_twi_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427299771&sr=1–2&keywords=when+google+met+wikileaks

Scott Horton’s Lords of Secrecy: The National Security Elite and America’s Stealth Warfare (New York: Nation Books, 2015)

http://www.amazon.com/Lords-Secrecy-National-Security-Americas-ebook/dp/B00N02RCCE/ref=sr_1_1_twi_2_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1427299720&sr=8–1&keywords=lords+of+secrecy

For an overview of the ever-metastasizing international surveillance state, I recommend two great books:

Julia Angwin’s Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom In a World of Relentless Surveillance (Times Books, 2014)

http://www.amazon.com/Dragnet-Nation-Security-Relentless-Surveillance-ebook/dp/B00FCQW7HG/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=1–1&qid=1434757525

Bruce Schneier’s Data and Goliath: The Hidden Battles to Collect Your Data and Control Your World (W. W. Norton & Company, 2015)

http://www.amazon.com/Data-Goliath-Battles-Collect-Control-ebook/dp/B00L3KQ1LI/ref=la_B000AP7EVS_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1434757502&sr=1–1

If you’d like some historical context for Edward Snowden’s actions and what the government has been trying to do to him, Judith Ehrlich’s and Rick Goldsmith’s Academy Award — nominated The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is as illuminating as it is riveting

http://www.amazon.com/Most-Dangerous-Man-America-Ellsberg/dp/B00329PYGQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1434862283&sr=1–1&keywords=the+most+dangerous+man+in+america