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Western intelligence agencies used to inhabit a parallel world where spy battled spy. Their trade was stealing or guarding secrets. Their masters were the men and women in government. Today the intelligence services are part of everyone’s world. Their main task has been to protect society from terrorists and criminals. They are increasingly held to account in the press, parliaments and courts.

The intelligence revolution is partly the result of new technology. As recently as 1999, on becoming director of the American National Security Agency (NSA), Michael Hayden asked to send an e-mail to all staff. He was told: “We can’t actually do that.” The organization used computers to break codes rather than to surf the web as everyone else did. The NSA’s new facility in Utah, the first of several, now stores

exabytes of data drawn from everyday communications. At Britain’s GCHQ, most code-breaking was done on paper until well into the 1980s.

The revolution has brought spying closer to ordinary people. After the attacks on America on September 11th 2001, counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency became the focus for the American intelligence agencies. Almost two-thirds of today’s intelligence personnel have been hired since 9/11. As the world has moved online, so the spooks have become involved in monitoring organized crime and paedophiles as well as terrorists.

In a not very remote past, spies sent coded messages using short-wave radios and dead letter boxes. Now the communications of the spooks’ new targets are mixed in with everyone else’s, shuttling between computers and smartphones that are identical to those on your desk and in your pocket. Counter-terrorism, in particular, is pre-emptive. Hence the security services have had to act as hunters of conspiracies rather than gatherers of evidence.

Western intelligence — Shaken and stirred.

In: The Economist, 12/11/2016 (adapted).

Based on text, judge the following item.

In the fragment “on becoming director of the American National Security Agency”, the preposition “on” refers to a period when the action is taking place.