by Barry Eisler
“Guardian Angel, then?” Remar said.
Senator McQueen nodded. “And I can’t think of a better man to run it than you, General. You know you will have my full support. Thank you for your service, and for your lifelong dedication to keeping the American people safe.”
Remar offered a single, crisp nod. “Thank you, Senator. I’ll continue to do what I can. In fact, I know we all will.”
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:
PROLOGUE
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
CHAPTER 1
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
CHAPTER 2
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/
CHAPTER 6
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/
CHAPTER 7
It’s possible Manus has seen this video on concealing a handgun inside a vehicle
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odT-CfS7lQs
CHAPTER 8
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
CHAPTER 9
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
CHAPTER 10
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/
CHAPTER 11
ISIS waterboarded journalist James Foley
http://www.ibtimes.com/james-foley-waterboarding-us-journalist-was-tortured-isis-using-same-techniques-cia-used-1673268
CHAPTER 12
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
CHAPTER 13
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
CHAPTER 14
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/
CHAPTER 16
“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
CHAPTER 17
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/
CHAPTER 18
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
CHAPTER 20
Mobile IMSI-catcher cell phone trackers
http://arstechnica.
com/tech-policy/2013/09/meet-the-machines-that-steal-your-phones-data/
CHAPTER 22
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
CHAPTER 23
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