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
CHAPTER 24
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
CHAPTER 25
“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
CHAPTER 26
“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/
CHAPTER 27
Peyton Quinn’s Five Rules for Managing Impending Violence
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com/get_attacked.htm
CHAPTER 28
HUMINT, SIGINT . . . and now, LOVEINT
http://crookedtimber.org/2013/08/24/loveint/
CHAPTER 31
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/
CHAPTER 32
How to leak securely using SecureDrop
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/01/28/how-to-leak-to-the-intercept/
CHAPTER 41
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 pr
ivileged 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/
CHAPTER 45
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
CHAPTER 46
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/
CHAPTER 47
“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/
CHAPTER 49
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
EPILOGUE
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/
Names change; programs continue
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office#Components_of_TIA_projects_that_continue_to_be_developed
GENERAL READING
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
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS . . . . . . . .
Although I’m sure I came up short in various ways, I tried hard to accurately convey the experience of being hearing impaired. In this regard, I’m indebted to two authors:
Andrew Solomon, for Far from the Tree: Parents, Children, and the Search for Identity (New York: Scribner, 2012)
http://www.amazon.com/Far-Tree-Parents-Children-Identity/dp/0743236726/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie
=UTF8&qid=1425696517&sr=1-1&keywords=far+from+the+tree
And Cece Bell, for her wonderfully evocative and moving graphic novel, El Deafo (New York: Amulet Books, 2014)
http://www.amazon.com/El-Deafo-Cece-Bell/dp/1419712179/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1425696451&sr=1-1&keywords=el+deafo+by+cece+bell
If you don’t think someone deaf could be as deadly as Manus, you must have missed Andrew Vachss’s Burke books, featuring Max the Silent, the last courier you would ever want to cross. Now you know . . .
http://www.amazon.com/Andrew-Vachss/e/B000APBFC2
I’m not as technologically savvy as I’d like, which means this article by Micah Lee for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, “Encryption Works: How to Protect Your Privacy in the Age of NSA Surveillance,” was perfect for me. Thorough, understandable, and useful.
https://freedom.press/encryption-works
Another great Micah primer on how to keep your online communications private.
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/07/14/communicating-secret-watched/
And from BeYourOwnReason: “Tightening your Security, Safeguarding Your Right to Privacy”
https://medium.com/@beyourownreason/tightening-your-security-safeguarding-your-right-to-privacy-29af5b7a31c
To the extent I get violence right in my fiction, I have many great instructors to thank, including Massad Ayoob, Tony Blauer, Wim Demeere, Dave Grossman, Tim Larkin, Marc MacYoung, Rory Miller, and Peyton Quinn. I highly recommend their superb books and courses for anyone who wants to be safer in the world, or just to create more realistic violence on the page:
http://www.massadayoobgroup.com
http://www.tonyblauer.com
http://www.wimsblog.com
http://www.killology.com
http://www.targetfocustraining.com
http://www.nononsenseselfdefense.com
http://www.chirontraining.com
http://www.rmcat.com
Rex Bonomelli presented so many knockout design concepts it made me sad a book can only have one cover. But what a cover!
I like to listen to music while I write, and sometimes a certain band or album gets especially associated with what I’m working on. This time around, the band was Royal Jelly Jive. Listen to lead singer Lauren Michelle Bjelde belt out Pterygophora—the elegance of Nina Simone and the rough grit of Tom Waits, indeed.