Summary

In Chapter 15, Snowden relocated to Geneva for his first posting as a TISO. He came to understand the differences between technologists like himself, who were interested in digital intelligence, and his colleagues from the CIA whose role was to gather “human intelligence” (150) directly from people they interacted with, rather than covertly surveilling their digital lives. Snowden himself was briefly involved in the cultivation of a source of human intelligence: he met a banker from Saudi Arabia at a party and suggested to a CIA officer named Cal that he could be a useful source.

Cal befriended the Saudi banker but did not make much progress cultivating him as a source. In desperation, Cal pressured the banker into driving home while drunk before calling the police and informing them of the banker’s license plate number and the suspicion that he was drunk driving. The...