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"Edward Snowden chose three journalists to tell the stories in his Top Secret trove of NSA documents: Barton Gellman of The Washington Post, Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian and filmmaker Laura Poitras, all of whom would share the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service. Poitras went on to direct the Oscar-winning Citizenfour. Greenwald wrote an instant memoir and cast himself as a pugilist on Snowden's behalf. Gellman took his own path. Snowden and his documents were the beginning, not the end, of a story he had prepared his whole life to tell. More than 20 years as a top investigative journalist armed him with deep sources in national security and high technology. New sources reached out from government and industry, making contact on the same kinds of secret, anonymous channels that Snowden had used. Gellman's reporting unlocked new puzzles in the NSA archive. And as Snowden's revelations faded somewhat from the public consciousness, the machinations he exposed continue still, with many policies unaltered despite societal outrage. Dark Mirror is a true-life spy tale that touches us all, told with authority and an inside view of extraordinary events. Within it is a chilling personal account of the obstacles facing the author, beginning with Gellman's discovery of his own name in Snowden's NSA document trove. Google notifies him that a foreign government is trying to compromise his account. A trusted technical adviser finds anomalies on his laptop. Sophisticated impostors approach Gellman with counterfeit documents, attempting to divert or discredit his work. Throughout Dark Mirror, the author wages an escalating battle against unknown digital adversaries who force him to mimic their tradecraft in self-defense. With the vivid and insightful style that marked Gellman's bestselling Angler, Dark Mirror is an inside account of the surveillance-industrial revolution and its discontents, fighting back against state and corporate intrusions into our most private spheres. Along the way, and with the benefit of hindsight, it tells the full story of a government leak unrivaled in drama since All the President's Men"--… (more)
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Edward Snowden to Barton Gellman in “Dark Mirror” by Barton Gellman
“The defining feature of Snowden’s
In “Dark Mirror” by Barton Gellman
Me: “Anything to keep us safe. Anything. Please, feel free to trawl through my rubbish, to bug my bedroom, to tail me to work, to eavesdrop on my phone conversations, to peruse my emails. I have no idea what liberty is or whether I even deserve it but I know that my beautiful government only wants the best in this best of all possible worlds. My soul, my intellect, my integrity is nothing compared to the greater good. I am completely expendable and exist only to make life easier for the government who will do everything to protect me from threats left, right and center. I want them to scan me when I leave the house, when I get on the bus, when I enter the office, when I go to a sports match, when I go to a restaurant. I have neither the judgment nor the ability to know whether I am a threat to the general public. My thoughts, my words, my deeds must be recorded, registered, interpreted, sanctioned, filed, stored and preserved in the name of a liberty I am too ignorant to understand. The evil we face is simply beyond my limited immagination and I will accept any humiliation because I have learned that CIVIL LIBERTIES ARE WHAT MAKES TERRORISM POSSIBLE! and anyone who refuses to spy on his neighbours or sleep with one eye open IS A TRAITOR!!!!!”
NSA: “Indeed does your grammar needs constant attention and correction by the secret intelligence services. The word is not ‘immagination’ but ‘imagination’. Clearly a threat to the integrity of English literary heritage.”
Me: “I take my hat off to you, sir. You are just the sort of vigilant anti-terrorist that makes me proud to hand over my civil liberties without asking for anything in return. In fact, the double "m" was part of an encrypted message that I thought I had manage to pass on to the terrorists without the dozy on-line community noticing but I clearly hadn't reckoned upon the likes of you. I trust this will earn you the promotion you so richly reserve and if there is anything else I need to confess too, rest assured that I remain available for waterboarding at a moment's notice.”
Me: “That's it for me. I'm not using Google anymore, or the Internet. I've had enough of this vacuous nonsense. No more shall I sit in front of a laptop for hours wondering: what a load of bollocks I've been looking at. This will be the last post on here or anywhere for that matter. Have a nice day. Where the hell are my Signet classics?”
A few moments later.
Me: “Oh sh*t, I've just realised they will find my hamster video that I put online years ago to test this internet lark out. This is not going to go well for me when I'm acting totally bad ass in the interrogation room with the CIA and they put Fluffy on the projector.”