BY Miranda Neubauer | Monday, April 21 2014

Three Hop Warrant on The Good Wife (Screenshot, CBS)

Even as the real Edward Snowden faces questions over his motives in Russia, another side of his legacy played out for the over nine million viewers of last night's The Good Wife, which concluded its season long storyline exploring NSA surveillance. In the episode titled All Tapped Out, one young NSA worker's legal concerns lead him to becoming a whistle-blower, setting off a chain of events that allows the main character, lawyer Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), and her husband, Illinois Governor Peter Florrick (Chris Noth), to turn the tables on the NSA using its own methods.

As techPresident previously noted, Alicia and her legal practice had initially come under the NSA's radar at the beginning of the season because of a client suspected of having some ties to Islamic extremism. But the NSA staffers and their supervisor ended up widening their focus on Alicia with a "three-hop warrant" because they were intrigued by her ties to the governor. In that episode and a subsequent one earlier this spring that touched on the concept of "parallel construction," the young NSA workers doing the call monitoring often acted as meta-commentary on the TV audience, as TV reviewers noted, following the lawyers' lives and relationships in the same way that TV viewers do. (“I think Will and Diane end up getting it on.")

In Sunday's episode, Jeff (Zach Woods) , one of the nerdy NSA workers shown to be interspersing their work with sharing silly web videos, gets suspicious when he faces a new question during his weekly lie detector test about removing confidential materials from the workplace.

Impressed by the take-charge attitude of Alicia's law partner Cary Agos (Matt Czuchry) that he hears on the wiretap, Jeff ends up seeking out the law firm for legal help: Insisting on meeting with them in their noisy freight elevator, he tells them he's an independent contractor for the NSA and that he's worried about the question because he took home a flash drive from work and uploaded material to his home computer: a valentine for his sister's kids, but also some confidential documents. "Why can't you just tell them you took the flash drive home accidentally?," asks Clarke, another lawyer played by Nathan Lane. "Everybody is worried about the next Snowden, they won't believe me. I don't want to disappear one night," Jeff says.

Later Cary and Clarke tell Jeff that he needs to be whistle-blower. "You're not protected if you took the flash drive home accidentally, but you are protected if you took it home due to wrongdoing," Cary says. "What wrongdoing?," Jeffrey asks. "Have you seen any wrongdoing?," Clark asks. As Jeff laughs uncomfortably, Cary explains, "We have something worked out for you, but you have to do exactly what we say." They tell him to go back to work, and answer the problematic question honestly. To lay the groundwork for his defense Jeffrey tells his co-workers he suspects that a supervisor, their system admin, is monitoring his ex-wife's calls. "I just think it's wrong," he tells them. Since they shrug and don't think it's wrongdoing, "that's why you go to the office of the general counsel," Cary tells Jeff, giving him the script: "I am an independent contractor for the NSA and I want to report wrongdoing within the company. Before I go further, this report must remain confidential and there can be no repercussions for me." Cary explains that "then it will no longer be about your suspicious removal of a flash drive," Cary says. "You removed it because you're a whistle-blower, that protects you," Clarke explains.

But things don't go as planned. One of his co-workers overhears Cary on the wiretap mentioning the NSA in the background, even though Jeff had warned the lawyers to be careful about discussing his case. "It's probably nothing, he just read something online or something," Jeff deflects. And then he gets called in to see the supervisor he accused of spying on his ex-wife. Jeff gets suspended, and he goes back to the law firm. "And you can't be saying NSA anywhere, it was picked up on a speaker phone," he tells the lawyers. That catches the attention of Alicia, who is in the office but hadn't been working on the case.

She confronts him, asking him how he knew about the NSA mention when he had told the lawyers earlier they weren't being listened to. As Jeff is flustered, now face-to-face with the woman he has been following over the past months, she calls her daughter and threatens to say his name on the phone and mention that he is in their law offices. Jeff breaks down and admits that Alicia is a target. "It's three hops from you," he tells an increasingly agitated Alicia. She jumps up and tells everyone in the office to get off their phones and computers. "Use this, pen and paper," Clarke tells an employee, handing him a notepad. As Alicia rushes off to the office of her husband, the governor, it becomes clear that the anger over the surveillance is acting as an emotional and professional catalyst for her, as she had previously had trouble getting out of bed and refinding her motivation after grieving the shocking death of a formerly close friend and lover. (At the beginning of the episode, one of the NSA workers had remarked that in their phone conversations Cary and Clarke were worried about Alicia. "She's still in bed?," Jeff asked)

Alicia tells Governor Florrick and his advisor Eli Gold (Alan Cumming) that she believes they are under NSA surveillance. Peter gets into action calling a U.S. Senator called "Bill" (on a new intern's cell phone) to express concern about him and his wife being under NSA surveillance. "That bastard Snowden. The public doesn't get why it's necessary," the senator says. "I think I'm with the public on this one," Peter says, and asks him to look into it on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

As Cary and Clarke fight back against Jeff's work suspension, they are hampered in their questioning by the NSA counselor invoking the state secrets act at every point and the fact that one of the documents gathered in a raid on Jeff''s apartment, which they want to refer to as evidence, a meeting schedule, has been retroactively classified so that the lawyers and the workplace mediator would need to get security clearance. Clarke ends up threatening to file a discrimination lawsuit in federal court based on Jeff being part Cherokee. Cary notes that such a case would become part of the record. "You know, the public record," Clarke says. "The record open to the public."

Alicia meanwhile, fights back against the NSA in her own way. On the phone with an opposing lawyer played by Michael J. Fox, Louis Canning, she begins randomly asking him "what do you think about Al Qaeda?" "What do I think about Al Qaeda, they're a terrorist organization..." Back at the NSA, one of the staffers says, "I just got five alerts on one call." "What do I think about the NSA?," they now hear him say. "I don't know, I've always been kind of a libertarian." "Ah Ayn Rand, and all that..." "She's an under-appreciated writer..."

A Three Hop Warrant on The Good Wife (Screenshot/CBS)

On another screen, an NSA staffer is monitoring the call back from the senator, named William Cuff, to Peter. He tells Peter that he's spoken to the offices in Illinois and he's in the clear. But Peter is not convinced. He begins asking the senator about a sketchy sounding deal involving the "Westgate construction site." The senator gets nervous. "Peter, that was just between you and me." "And it is between you and me, now, on the phone." The senator starts to get what Peter's after. "My point is I want them to stop listening to my office. I want them to stop listening to my wife's law office. For the next five months I'm going to call my wife's office twice a week to discuss the Westgate construction site, so if you don't want to be in the papers, I would strongly suggest you use your considerable influence with the NSA to take us off any lists that we are on," Peter says. The senator reveals that the supervisor out of the Illinois NSA office is pushing the surveillance. "Get me his contact info," Peter says. "It won't make a difference calling him...," but Peter insists.

As the episode concludes, the intern from Peter's office is seen putting up a "used car" ad in a mosque with rip-off phone number -- for the Illinois NSA supervisor, who gets increasingly perplexed about all the calls he's getting. He gets called in for his own lie detector test, and placed on administrative leave. "Is this about these calls? ... Five calls, asking me about a car. I don't know anything about them," he tells the general counsel. "Well, let's talk about what you do know..." "Nothing!" "Let's take the calls one at a time. Who is Bilal Al-Dawudi?"

In the next scenes. Cary calls Jeff to tell him that the government has dropped its case against him. As the NSA staffers speculate that Jeffrey has left to go to Iceland ("It has the hottest women!"), the general counsel drops in to tell them the Florrick tap is over, and gives them a new assignment on a recently married 31-year old in Dearborn, Michigan.

The full episode is available here for the next several weeks. As techPresident has also previously noted, The Good Wife has also done episodes exploring issues surrounding Anonymous, Aaron Swartz, and the Reddit hunt for the Boston bombing suspect.