My career in the American Intelligence Community (IC) lasted only seven years, which surprises me, as I realize it is just one year longer than the time I have since spent exiled in a country that was not my choice. During those seven years, however, I participated in the most significant change in the history of American espionage, the transition from targeted surveillance of individuals to mass surveillance of entire populations. I helped make it technologically possible for a government to collect all digital communications from around the world, store them indefinitely, and investigate them at will.
After September 11, the IC was plagued by guilt over its failure to protect America, as it had allowed, during its "watch," the most overwhelming and destructive attack against the USA since Pearl Harbor. In response to this development, the community's leaders sought to create a system that would never allow such a surprise attack again. The foundation of this system would be technology, something foreign to the mindset of the army of political scientists and business administration experts who largely staffed the community.
Thus, the doors of the most secretive intelligence collection agencies were thrown wide open to young technologists like me. And that’s how geeks became members of this community. If I was good at something in those years, it was computers, so I quickly advanced. At the age of twenty-two, I secured my first clearance for classified NSA information, for a position at the absolute lowest level of the organization.
