After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, the US security system was degraded and furious: this must never happen again. The world's only superpower, wounded so deeply and so devastatingly - by a league of fanatics armed with fresh flight certificates and carpet knives. CIA (foreign espionage) and NSA (communication surveillance) entered a renewal process driven by organizational anxiety and increased budgets: old officials and principles were cleared - and at the same time they expanded wildly into new areas, past the old borders.
This is a frequently told story about the eleventh of September and it is central even in Edward Snowden's story. He himself swirled the intelligence world on this wave as the authorities lowered the formal admission requirements and sucked in the first Internet generation's self-taught hacker like Snowden to seize the contemporary.
His portrayal of his way into the inner room of secrets , at a rapid pace past the security tests and indoctrination lessons, is funny, laid-back satire and at the same time an insightful portrayal of a nation in shock as well as of a young man seeking his task.
As the self-thinker he certainly is, Edward Snowden also highlights a completely different side of the post-eleventh September situation: the United States had the whole world on its side. With the exception of a few clicks of fanatics, at that time all peoples and countries sympathized with the United States nation and people. And it was a strong sympathy: a united humanity, against the shocking brutality of terrorism.
But instead of building on this unity , newly-incumbent President George W Bush regrouped into a Christian fundamentalist colored fairy tale where the United States stood alone against Evil, in short. Bush threw his country into a "war on terror" - more specifically against Afghanistan and Iraq, despite the fact that the eleventh September terrorists had strong ties to Saudi Arabia, Snowden points out.
On the night shift in his corner of the CIA, he reads intelligence reports showing that decision makers were also aware of this. The torture was reintroduced and secret operations expanded, which were kept secret even for their own country's democratic process. And NSA has built up mass surveillance of the entire world of telecommunication and computer communications. In Utah, a huge server room was built to store all this information.
Gradually, Snowden understands the scope of the project , and the lies that surround it. He begins to collect information systematically. The climax of the journey towards the heart of darkness is when he can finally sit down himself at a computer that transforms the monitored object's laptop into a surveillance tool. With a shocking experience of abuse, he looks at his screen right in the face of an Asian scientist reading the news at home on his laptop with his daughter in his lap: the webcam has become a spy camera.
So, NSA can do with any web connected webcam, anywhere in the world, as well as all mobiles can be made into eavesdropping microphones. This - which has already become the standard trick in police departments and political thrillers - was together with the indiscriminate mass surveillance at the core of Snowden's revealing 2013.
A shocking revelation that led to parts of the NSA's operations being stopped, some lying heads of government prosecuted and convicted - but above all, every person knows that the internet is an unsafe place where every step we take is monitored and posted.
His autobiography as a 36-year-old is a good book. Charming, sharp and deeply serious, both intelligent and wise (unfortunately also in a somewhat lumpy and half-melted Swedish translation but nothing that hinders reading).
Edward Snowden's story is another thread in the great weave around the question: Why didn't the world turn out well when the Cold War and the blood-soaked 1900s ended? A very readable, accessible and tangible book.