Dark Mirror: Edward Snowden and the American Surveillance State

by Barton Gellman

But when the state of the art expanded surveillance into digital neighborhoods used by everyone, the NSA outran its political mandate. The boundary of secret intelligence in a free society had shifted. It needed debate.

At its core this is a book about power. Information is the oxygen of control. Secrecy and surveillance, intertwined, define its flows. “Who knows what?” is a pretty good proxy for “Who governs whom?” Are citizens equipped to hold their government accountable? Are they free to shield themselves from an unwanted gaze? Can anyone today draw a line, say, “None of your business,” and make it stick?

Ethical journalists do not publish every secret they learn, but neither can they accept the government’s judgment as final.

But secrecy is never more damaging to self-government than in wartime, because making war is the very paradigm of a political choice.

In the early twenty-first century, the NSA had amassed a degree of latent power that Snowden believed to be an inherent threat. The machinery of electronic surveillance, and in particular of bulk collection, spanned so broad a reach that its mere potential for misuse was cause for alarm.