‘And I want to thank you most sincerely for joining us tonight. You’re about to experience an evening to remember. But you don’t want to listen to me. Without further ado, let me introduce you to the brains behind this project, the reason you all have come here tonight – Skip Lederer!’

To wild applause and whooping, Skip ambled in, sucking a popsicle. Beth had evidently not persuaded him to change: he was still in the Beavis and Butt-Head T-shirt, his only concession to the occasion a small radio mic. Instead of standing at the autocue, he chose to sit on the edge of the podium, his legs swinging like a toddler’s. He didn’t bother with an introduction. Instead, he took out the popsicle and examined it, then reached into his jeans pocket and held up a smart phone and an American Express card. ‘Most folks think these are what freedom is all about.’ He waved them in the air so everyone could see them.

‘Uh-uh. Not so. In fact they’re quite the opposite. These babies are the spy in your pocket, channels through which we can discover everything we need to know about an individual: what he buys, where he goes, who he meets, who he screws, what he reads, who his friends are, his enemies – and what they’re saying about him. We can find out more about a guy than he knows about himself. Great, huh? So, what’s the problem?’

He waited, ostensibly for someone to answer, but really for dramatic effect. They were hanging on his every word.

‘The problem, girls and boys, is not the collection of the intelligence, it’s what happens to that information. That’s the NSA’s problem number one. Their other problem, of course, is that they think they’re hot shit.’

He shook his head. ‘Know what? In actuality they are full of shit.’

A few of the audience whooped.

‘I mean literally. Their server capacity is maxed out. They got so much data on us they don’t know what to do with it all. Like, they’ve built the world’s biggest vacuum-cleaner to suck up all the intel, and it’s gummin’ up the works. They can’t process it. It’s too freakin’ much for them.’

He paused briefly to finish the popsicle, then gestured with the stick.

‘All that precious intel is mountains of information they don’t have the resources to begin to mine. Thar’s gold in tham thar mountains, but where’s the manpower to go panhandling for it? Sure it’s fine if you know who you’re looking for, which bad guys you’re on to. But what happens when you don’t know who the hell they are?’