THE GOD'S
EYE VIEW is a super-secret programme dedicated to spying on
just about everyone, and NSA superiors are hoping the
public
doesn't get to know about it or let alone leak it.
A great deal of layered information is required to
understand the
plot, which
generates some of the lines which science fiction readers
call "As you know, Captain..." Still, I don't have the
security clearance of the generals we meet, so the
explanation has to be conveyed somehow. Other terms, like
tradecraft, passive surveillance, insider threat and
biometric recognition, belong firmly to the spy thrillers.
In the years following Snowden, we find matters have become
much more rigorous.
Evie Gallagher has been installing, accessing and compiling
CCTV camera data from around the world for the NSA. If two
suspicious persons meet anywhere, the computer flags it.
She's unhappy that she reported a CIA sysadmin
worker meeting a journalist, and shortly afterwards the
agent was found dead in an apparent suicide. Her boss
Anders assures her nothing untoward occurred. But he's a
general, and he would say that, wouldn't he? Now, an agent
called Perkins has been spotted meeting a journalist called
Hamilton in Turkey. More trouble. Perkins knew to leave his
phone in his hotel room and pay by cash, but he didn't know
the NSA spied on internet café cameras in Turkey as part of
God's Eye. Evie Gallagher decides to wait and see what will
occur. Anders, meanwhile, goes straight for assassination
orders.
Among the sinister cast is a man named Manus, a tool of
Anders. He deserves special mention because his hearing was
lost during childhood violent abuse. We're told a lot of
unpleasantness about his background, with no explanation
for why he was bullied non stop; this period
resembles 'Ender's Game'. He's now a retained abductor and
killer who doesn't ask questions. Countering this chiller,
we meet Daniel Perkins, a more ordinary guy, deeply
concerned after the death of the woman who designed the
security around God's Eye. Did someone ensure her silence,
and make it look like a random killing? He has taken her
files and in Turkey, passed them to a young computer-savvy
journalist, Hamilton. But that man is seized, supposedly by
ISIS, within hours. Perkins knows the story is rubbish and
he's terrified.
If you're not already feeling ice-water in your veins, you
will be as you continue to read. Evie Gallagher, a divorcee
with a young hearing-impaired son is the most human and
heroic character, to my mind. Everyone is talking about the
Hamilton kidnapping, and she doesn't know what to do. I'm
wondering what I would do in her place. THE GOD'S EYE VIEW
by Barry Eisler shows us that handing anyone too much power
gives them delusions of absolute control and simultaneously
makes them paranoid. After reading this techno-thriller
you'll be scrapping your smartphone, driving a thirty-year-
old car and travelling with only carry-on bags. Because you
never know.
NSA director Theodore Anders has a
simple goal: collect every phone call, email, and keystroke
tapped on the Internet. He knows unlimited surveillance is
the only way to keep America safe.
Evelyn Gallagher doesn’t care much about any of that. She
just wants to keep her head down and manage the NSA’s camera
network and facial recognition program so she can afford
private school for her deaf son, Dash.
But when Evelyn discovers the existence of an NSA program
code-named God’s Eye, and connects it with the mysterious
deaths of a string of journalists and whistle-blowers, her
doubts put her and Dash in the crosshairs of a pair of
government assassins: Delgado, a sadistic bomb maker and
hacker; and Manus, a damaged giant of a man who until now
has cared for nothing beyond protecting the director.
Within an elaborate game of political blackmail, terrorist
provocations, and White House scheming, a global war is
being fought—a war between those desperate to keep the
state’s darkest secrets and those intent on revealing them.
A war that Evelyn will need all her espionage training and
savvy to survive. A war in which the director has the
ultimate informational advantage: The God’s Eye View.
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