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
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.
http://www.royaljellyjive.com
Ali Watkins, Huffington Post political reporter, helped me better understand the arcane workings of the Senate while the two of us happened to be lurking outside the Room 219 SCIF (Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility) in the Hart Senate Office Building. And Mark Fallon and Steve Kleinman were also generous in sharing their experience from inside the SCIF (experience they’ve gained through tireless efforts to persuade American legislators that torture is a bad idea).