Wednesday, June 26, 2013

"Ed Snowden", the movie

Movie treatment for Ed Snowden: Government Mole

Ed Snowden is introduced as a high school dropout--a loner who avoids social relationships.

Snowden joins Army to try and please his father, a career soldier, but is discharged after breaking his legs in a training accident.  This rejection further strengthens Snowden's loner behavior.

Snowden, like many of his kind and age, seeks a life in the artificial world of his computer where he further avoids personal contatcts and believes he can control his life and its outcomes.

He lands a job at CIA as a computer analyst, and then moves to NSA.  He soon finds he is allowed access to secretly-captured data.  As he progresses, he is promoted, and his security clearance is elevated to Top-Secret.

He soon realizes that access to secret data affords him the "cred" to impress others.  Though he has few friends, and most are computer nerds like him who have no social life, it still raises his self-importance in his own narrowly-defined world.

Each year, he finds himself needing to copy or download more secret data than he did the year before.  He becomes addicted to amassing data in the same way a bipolar person goes on shopping sprees--the need to buy, not the need for the goods.

As would be expected, the more data he hoards, the more paranoid be becomes.  He is sure his co-workers are watching him.  He believes the NSA is spyng on him the way it spies on others.  His paranoia starts to race, causing him to wonder when he will be caught infiltrating the NSA databank.

When he truly believes the NSA is onto him, he changes jobs to Booz Allen, the NSA consultant.  There he finds a relaxed security atmosphere.  He feels he can now download huge amounts of data without being discovered.

As his paranoia of being caught lessens, his paranoia takes a different form--he soon thinks of himself as a victim of government spying.  Hence, Snowden believes he must tell the world about the NSA spying on everybody. 

Snowden makes plans for escape and his 'whistleblowing' to a newspaper called "The Guardian."

Snowden escapes to Hong Kong and plans his exile.

He is approached by the Chinese.  He sells the data he has stolen.  He further works a deal with the Russians.  Snowden is unrepentant--he only sold the data (for far less than it was worth) to have money to live on for a few years.

All such movies have an unexpected development:

In this case, Snowden had downloaded a big secret that he did not realize.  The NSA spyware also allowed the NSA to track and follow money movements through ATM machines using a backdoor to the banking systems ATM network.  The big banks, which the US government holds great sway over since the 2008 collapse, had no choice but to allow the NSA into their network.

A Chinese computer nerd discovers the ATM backdoor, hacks the password, and finds he can further worm his way into the USA banking system.

One day, the Chinese take control of the ATM network and jam the US banks from transferring funds or making electronic deposits or payments.  The US economy completely shuts down causing total panic and upheaval in the USA.

For the sequel:  The Mole Rises

In a post-apocalyptic world, ..............